Sixth Congress

1928

17 July – l September

Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies and Semi-Colonies

1. Introduction

Changes in the International Situation

1. The Sixth Congress of the Communist International declares that
the “Theses on the National and Colonial Questions” drawn up by Lenin
and adopted at the Second Congress are still valid, and should serve as
a guiding line for the further work of the communist parties. Since the
time of the Second Congress the actual significance of the colonies and
semi-colonies, as factors of crisis in the imperialist world system,
has vastly increased.

On the one hand, as necessary objects of exploitation for
imperialism, the colonies have become a perpetual source of conflicts
and wars between the imperialists to an even higher degree than in the
past. Wars, and new plans for wars, by individual imperialist states
against various peoples which have remained more or less independent,
as well as intensified preparations of the imperialist powers for wars
against each other for a new division of the colonies, continue without
ceasing.

On the other hand, the vast colonial and semi-colonial world has
become an unquenchable blazing furnace of the revolutionary mass
movement. The basis of this phenomenon, which is of colossal historical
importance, is furnished in part by changes which have taken place,
during and after the imperialist world war, in the internal situation
of the most important colonies and semi-colonies – in their economic
and social structure – e.g. the strengthening of the elements of
capitalist and of industrial development, the intensification of the
agrarian crisis, the growth of the proletariat and the beginning of its
organisation, the pauperisation of the mass of the peasantry, etc. In
part also the basis is to be found in changes in the international
situation; on the one hand, the difficulties encountered by the leading
imperialist powers during the world war and in the post-war crisis of
world capitalism, and afterwards, as a result of the imperialist
“peace”, the intensified rapacious aggressiveness of the colonial
policy of Great Britain, Japan, the United States, France, Italy and
Holland; on the other hand, the transformation of Russia from an
imperialist into an anti-imperialist proletarian power, the victorious
struggle of the peoples of the Soviet Union in defence of their
independence, the example of the revolutionary solution of the national
question in the Soviet Union and of the revolutionising influence of
the work of building up socialism there, and, furthermore, the
strengthening of the communist movement in the capitalist countries and
the activity of this movement in the defence of the colonies.

All these circumstances immeasurably accelerated the process of the
political awakening of the vast human masses in the colonial and
semi-colonial countries, and led to a whole series of important
revolutionary mass risings, in most cases, moreover, on the basis of a
close-knit, characteristic association of the anti-imperialist
emancipatory struggle with the development of the forces of internal
class struggle.

The Chinese Revolution

2. Of first-rate international importance was the Chinese
revolution. The shooting down of the Chinese workers in Shanghai on 30
May 1925 was the signal for the letting loose of a revolutionary wave
until then unparalleled in China. The most important industrial centres
of China-Shanghai, Tientsien, Hankow, Canton and the British colony of
Hong-Kong – were the arena of a mass revolutionary strike struggle
which called forth an answering wave of mass peasant revolts against
the Chinese landlords and gentry in the rural districts. Already, at
this early stage of the wide national-revolutionary front, the national
bourgeoisie attempted to limit the revolutionary struggle exclusively
to such national tasks as the fight against the imperialists and the
anti-imperialist boycott. Almost simultaneously with the rise of the
revolutionary wave, the counter-revolution began to organise its forces
(Chiang Kai-shek’s coup d’etat in March 1926, the firing on student
demonstrations in Peking, the formation of a right group in the
Kuomintang, the start of the struggle against the peasantry in Kwantung
and Kwansi, etc.). The Northern Expedition, which began in the summer
of 1926, the capture of a number of provinces and the defeat and
disintegration of a whole series of reactionary militarist groups were
accompanied by an enormous growth of the mass movement (the seizure of
the British concessions in Hankow and Kiukiang, the general strike in
Shanghai, which developed into an armed insurrection, and the gigantic
growth of the peasant movement). The successful insurrection in
Shanghai in April 1927 posed the question of the hegemony of the
proletariat in the national-revolutionary movement, finally impelled
the native bourgeoisie into the camp of reaction and called forth the
counterrevolutionary coup d’etat of Chiang Kai-shek.

The independent activity of the workers in the struggle for power,
and above all the further growth of the peasant movement, which
developed into agrarian revolution, impelled also the Wuhan government,
which had been established under the leadership of the petty-bourgeois
wing of the Kuomintang, to go over to the camp of the
counterrevolution. The revolutionary wave, however, was near to
subsidence. In the course of a number of uprisings (the rising led by
Ho-Lung and Ye-Ting, and the peasant uprisings in Hunan, Hupeh,
Kwantung and Kiangsu) the working class and peasantry still strove to
tear the power from the hands of the imperialists, bourgeoisie and
landlords, and in this way to avert the defeat of the revolution. But
in this they were not successful. The last powerful onslaught of this
revolutionary wave was the insurrection of the heroic Canton
proletariat, which under the slogan of Soviets attempted to link up the
agrarian revolution with the overthrow of the Kuomintang and the
establishment of the dictatorship of the workers and peasants.

The Indian Movement

3. In India the policy of British imperialism, which used to retard
the development of native industry, evoked great dissatisfaction among
the Indian bourgeoisie. The class consolidation of the latter which
replaced its former division into religious sects and castes, and which
was expressed in the fusion of the Indian National Congress (organ of
the Indian bourgeoisie) with the Muslim League effected in 1916,
confronted British imperialists with a national united front in the
country. Fear of the revolutionary movement during the war compelled
British imperialism to make concessions to the native bourgeoisie which
found expression, in the economic sphere, in insignificant
parliamentary reforms introduced in 1919. Nevertheless, a strong
ferment, expressing itself in a series of revolutionary outbreaks
against British imperialism, was produced among the masses of the
Indian people as a result of the ruinous consequences of the
imperialist war (famine and epidemics, 1918), the catastrophic
deterioration of the position of wide sections of the working
population, the influence of the October revolution in Russia and of a
series of insurrections in various colonial countries (as, for example,
the struggle of the Turkish people for independence). This first great
anti-imperialist movement in India (1919-1922) ended in the betrayal of
the cause of the national revolution by the Indian bourgeoisie, which
in the main was caused by terror before the rising wave of peasant
insurrections, and also by the workers’ strikes against native
employers. The collapse of the national-revolutionary movement and the
gradual decline of bourgeois nationalism enabled British imperialism
once more to return to a policy of hindering the industrial development
of India. The recent measures of British imperialism in India show that
the objective contradictions between British colonial monopoly and the
tendencies in the direction of the independent economic development of
India are becoming more accentuated from year to year, and are leading
to a new revolutionary crisis.

The real threat to British domination comes, not from the bourgeois
camp, but from the growing mass movement of the Indian workers, which
is developing in the form of large scale strikes; at the same time the
accentuation of the crisis in the village bears witness to the maturing
of an agrarian revolution. All these phenomena are leading to a radical
transformation of the whole political situation in India.

Indonesia

4. In Indonesia Dutch imperialism is compelled in an
ever-increasing degree to give its more powerful neighbours (American
and British imperialism) the opportunity of importing foreign
commodities and foreign capital into this colony. Thus Dutch
imperialism itself in Indonesia is actually more and more compelled to
play a subordinate role, as, so to say, that of a “commissionaire” who
at the same time is compelled to perform the functions of a policeman
and an executioner. The immediate impulse of the insurrection which
broke out in Java in November 1926 was given by the economic crisis,
and the resulting worsening of the conditions of the mass of the
population, as well as by the cruel repression exercised by the
government against the national-revolutionary movement. To a
considerable degree the rebellion was carried out under the leadership
of the communists. The government succeeded in drowning the
insurrection in blood, in suppressing the Communist Party, and in
executing or throwing into prison thousands of the best leaders of the
proletariat and peasantry. Insignificant reforms, instituted thereafter
by the government in order to weaken the hatred of the masses and to
purchase the assistance of the national-reformist leaders for the work
of “pacification” of the masses, have in no way improved the conditions
of the working sections of the people. The continuing economic crisis
in the country, especially in the sugar and rubber industries, the
capitalist offensive with the object of worsening the conditions of
labour, and growing unemployment create the objective preconditions for
the inevitable new rising of the masses of workers and peasants against
the ruling imperialism.

Northern Africa and Syria

5. In North Africa in 1925 there began a series of
rebellions of the Kabyle tribes of the Riff against French and Spanish
imperialism, followed by the rebellions of the Druse tribes in the
mandated territory of Syria against French imperialism. In
Morocco the imperialists only succeeded in dealing with these
rebellions after a prolonged war. The intensified penetration of
foreign capital into these countries is already calling into life new
social forces. The appearance and growth of an urban proletariat
manifests itself in a wave of mass strikes that are, for the first
time, sweeping over Palestine, Syria, Tunis and Algiers. Gradually, but
very slowly, the peasantry also is being drawn into the struggle in
these countries.

Latin America

6. The growing economic and military expansion of North American imperialism in the countries of Latin America
is transforming this continent into one of the most important meeting
places of the antagonisms of the whole imperialist colonial system. The
influence of Great Britain, which before the war was the decisive
influence in these countries, and which reduced many of them to the
position of semi-colonies, is being replaced since the war by a still
greater dependence on the United States. By means of its increased
export of capital, North American imperialism is conquering the
commanding positions in the economy of these countries, subordinating
their governments to its own financial control and at the same time
swallowing them one after other. This aggressive policy of American
imperialism is more and more taking on a character of undisguised
violence, passing over into armed intervention (e.g. Nicaragua). The
national-emancipatory struggle against American imperialism which has
begun in Latin America is taking place for the most part under the
leadership of the petty-bourgeoisie. The national bourgeoisie, which
represents a thin stratum of the population (with the exception of.
Argentine, Brazil and Chile), and which is connected, on the one hand,
with the big landowners, and, on the other hand, with American capital,
is in the camp of the counterrevolution.

The Mexican revolution, which began as a revolutionary peasant
struggle for land against the landowners and the church, at the same
time to a considerable degree assumed the character of a mass struggle
against American and British imperialism, and led to the formation of a
government of the petty-bourgeoisie, which endeavoured to keep itself
in power by means of concessions to the big landowners and to
North-American imperialism. The peasant risings, strikes of workers,
etc. in Ecuador directed against the government of the landlords of the
Guayaquil bankers and commercial bourgeoisie ended in a military coup
d’etat and the establishment of a military dictatorship in 1925. The
series of military revolutions in Chile, the guerilla war in Nicaragua
against North-American imperialism, the series of risings in South
Brazil, the uprising of the agricultural labourers in Patagonia and
Argentine, the revolt of the Indians in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and
Colombia, the mutinies and spontaneous general strikes and mass
demonstrations in Venezuela and Colombia, the mass anti-imperialist
movement in Cuba and throughout the whole of Central America, Colombia,
etc. – all these are events of the last few years which bear witness to
the widening and deepening of the revolutionary process and, in
particular, to the ever-growing popular indignation in the
Latin-American countries against world imperialism.

Contradictions of Imperialism

7. In the majority of cases imperialism has up to now succeeded in
bloody suppression of the revolutionary movement in the colonial
countries. But all the fundamental questions raised by these movements
remain unsolved.

The objective contradiction between the colonial policy of world
imperialism and the independent development of the colonial peoples is
by no means done away with, neither in China, nor in India, nor in any
other of the colonial and semi-colonial countries; on the contrary, the
contradiction only becomes more acute and can be overcome only by the
victorious revolutionary struggle of the toiling masses in the
colonies. Until this contradiction is overcome it will continue to
operate in every colony and semi-colony as one of the most powerful
objective factors making for revolution. At the same time, the colonial
policy of the imperialist powers acts as a powerful stimulant to
antagonisms and wars between these powers. This antagonism is becoming
more and more acute, especially in the semi-colonies, and
notwithstanding the blocs that are frequently established between the
imperialists, it plays a fairly important role. The greatest
significance, however, for the development of the revolutionary
movement in the colonies is borne by the contradictions between the
imperialist world, on the one hand, and the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics and the revolutionary labour movement in the capitalist
countries on the other hand.

The Colonies and the Social Revolution

8. The establishment of a fighting front between the active forces
of the socialist world revolution (the Soviet Union and the
revolutionary labour movement in the capitalist countries) on the one
side, and between the forces of imperialism on the other side, is of fundamental importance
in the present epoch of world history. The toiling masses of the
colonies struggling against imperialist slavery represent a most
powerful auxiliary force of the socialist world revolution. The
colonial countries at the present time constitute for world imperialism
the most dangerous sector of their front. The revolutionary
emancipatory movements of the colonies and semi colonies more and more
rally around the banner of the Soviet Union, convincing themselves by
bitter experience that there is no salvation for them except through
alliance with the revolutionary proletariat, and through the victory of
the world proletarian revolution over world imperialism. The
proletariat of the USSR, and the workers’ movement in the capitalist
countries, headed by the Communist International, in their turn are
supporting and will more and more effectively support in deeds the
emancipatory struggle of all the colonial and other dependent peoples;
they are the only sure bulwark of the colonial peoples in their
struggle for final liberation from the yoke of imperialism.
Furthermore, the alliance with the USSR and with the revolutionary
proletariat of the imperialist countries creates for the toiling masses
of the people of China, India and all other colonial and semi-colonial
countries the possibility of an independent, free, economic and
cultural development, avoiding the stage of the domination of the capitalist system or even the development of capitalist relations in general.

Thus, the whole perspective of development of the colonial peoples
is bounded by a new framework in the epoch of imperialism, of wars and
of revolution, an epoch in which is born the proletarian dictatorship.
Since the analysis of contemporary world economy as a whole in no way
leads to the perspective of a new prolonged period of flourishing
capitalism, but, on the contrary, leads to the inevitability of the
overthrow of capitalism, which has already fulfilled its progressive
historical role, has already become a brake on further development, is
already in process of disintegration (and giving place to the
proletarian dictatorship, e.g. the USSR), and is leading humanity to
ever new catastrophes – all this denotes the presence of the objective
possibility of a non-capitalist path of development for the backward
colonies, the possibility of the “growing-over” of the
bourgeois-democratic revolution in the leading colonies into the
proletarian socialist revolution with the aid of the victorious
proletarian dictatorship in the other countries. Under favourable
.objective conditions this possibility is converted into reality,
whereby the true path of development is determined by struggle and by
struggle alone. Consequently the theoretical and practical defence of
this path, and the most self-sacrificing struggle for it, is the duty
of all communists. In connection with this perspective there arises
before the colonies also the problem of revolutionary power on the
basis of soviets.

Thus all the basic questions of the revolutionary movement in the
colonies and semi-colonies are found to have an immediate connection
with the great epoch making struggle between the capitalist and
socialist systems – a struggle which at present is being conducted by
imperialism against the USSR on a world scale, and inside each separate
capitalist country between bourgeois class rule and the communist
movement.

In this struggle the cooperation of the revolutionary proletariat of
the whole world and of the toiling masses of the colonics represents
the surest guarantee of victory over imperialism. In this struggle
every conflict between two imperialist states and war of the
imperialists against the USSR must be utilised in the colonies for the
mobilisation of the masses and for drawing them into a decisive
struggle against imperialism, for national emancipation and for the
victory of the workers and peasants.

II. The Characteristic Features of Colonial Economics and of Imperialist Colonial Policy

Effects of Imperialism in the Colonies

9. The recent history of the colonies can only be understood if it
is looked upon as an organic constituent part of the development of
capitalist world economy as a whole, beginning with its earliest forms
and ending with its latest stage, viz imperialism.

In proportion as capitalism more and more strongly draws the immense
colonial areas into the sphere of its world economy based on
exploitation and profit-hunting, there is seen, reflected as in a
mirror, in the economic and political history of the colonial and
semi-colonial countries all the characteristic features of the so
called “civilising” and cultural mission of the capitalist mode of
production and of the bourgeois social order. In particular, it reveals
with merciless accuracy all the methods and practices of “primary
capitalist accumulation”. Its policy of conquest and oppression,
unsurpassed in cruelty, bound up as it has been with colonial robbery
and punitive expeditions, with opium wars and piratical raids for the
compulsory provision of the native populations with Bibles, whisky and
other trash, as conducted by the most Christian countries of Europe and
America, was one of the most important factors which hastened the
consolidation of the capitalist structure.

In spite of the disgusting lies of the imperialists and of their
reformist lackeys (MacDonald, Otto Bauer and Co), who maintain that
imperialism “educates the backward races for prosperity, progress and
culture”, the transition to the epoch of monopolist capitalism in no
way lightened the yoke weighing upon the many millions of the mass of
humanity in the colonial countries. The devastating consequences
everywhere brought about by capitalist development, in particular in
the first stage of its existence, are reproduced in the colonies to a
monstrous degree and at an accelerated rate, owing to the penetration
of foreign capital. The progressive results of capitalism, on the other
hand, are, for the most part, completely lacking in the colonies. Where
in the colonies the ruling imperialism is in need of social
support, it first of all allies itself with the ruling strata of the
previous social structure, with the feudal lords and with the trading
and money-lending bourgeoisie, against the majority of the people.
Everywhere imperialism attempts to preserve and to perpetuate all those
pre-capitalist forms of exploiting (especially in the villages) which
serve as the basis for the existence of its reactionary allies. The
mass of the people in these countries are compelled to payout enormous
sums for the upkeep of the military, police and administrative
apparatus of the colonial regime. The growth of famines and epidemics,
particularly among the pauperised peasantry, the mass expropriation of
the land of the native population, the inhuman conditions of labour (on
the plantations and mines of the white capitalists, and so on), which
at times are worse than open slavery – all this exerts its devastating
effect on the colonial population and not infrequently leads to the
dying out of whole nationalities. The “cultural role” of the
imperialist states in the colonies is in reality expressed in the role
of an executioner.

The Dominions

10. In the colonial countries it is necessary to distinguish between
those colonies of the capitalist countries which have served them as
colonising regions for their surplus population, and which in this way
have become a continuation of their capitalist system (Australia,
Canada, etc.), and those colonies which are exploited by the
imperialists primarily as markets for their commodities, as sources of
raw material and as spheres for the export of capital. This distinction
has not only a historic but also a great economic and political
significance. The colonies of the first type on the basis of their
general development became ‘‘dominions’’, that is, members of the given
imperialist system with equal, or nearly equal, rights. Capitalist
development reproduces among the white population the class structure
of the metropolis,* while the native population was, for the most part,
exterminated. There cannot be there any talk of the colonial regime in
the form that it shows itself in the colonies of the second type.
Between these two types is to be found a transitional type (in various
forms) where, alongside the numerous native population, there exists a
very considerable population of white colonists (South Africa, New
Zealand, Algiers, etc.). The bourgeoisie, which has come from the
metropolis, in essence represents in these countries (emigrant
colonies) nothing else than a colonial extension of the bourgeoisie of
the metropolis. The interests of this bourgeoisie coincide to a
considerable degree with the colonial interests of the metropolis. The
metropolis is interested to a certain extent in the strengthening of
its capitalist subsidiary in the colonies, in particular when this
subsidiary of imperialism is successful in enslaving the original
native population or even in completely destroying it. On the other
hand, the competition between various imperialist systems for influence
in the semi-independent countries can lead also to their breaking off
from the metropolis and even to a union with the competitors of the
latter. These reasons frequently compel imperialism to reconcile itself
to a certain political and economic independence of its agencies in
such colonies (dominions), which arise on the basis of its united and
native strength in relation to the corresponding imperialism.

*The imperial centre – the “mother country”.

Parasitic Nature of imperialism

11. The imperialist colonial regime is essentially based not only on
economic pressure but also on the extra economic compulsion of the
monopoly of the bourgeoisie of the imperialist countries in the
corresponding dependent countries. This monopoly, however, expresses
itself in two basic functions: on the one hand it serves the purpose of
merciless exploitation of the colony (various forms of immediate and
indirect exaction of tribute, super-profits in connection with the sale
of its own industrial goods, with the obtaining of cheap raw material
for its own industry and with the utilisation of very cheap labour
power, etc.); on the other hand the imperialist monopoly serves for the
preservation and development of the conditions of its own existence,
the functions of enslavement of the colonial masses.

In its function as colonial exploiter, the ruling imperialism in
relation to the colonial country acts primarily as a parasite sucking
the blood from the economic organism of the latter. The fact that this
parasite in relation to its victim represents a society with a
highly-developed culture makes it a so much the more powerful and
dangerous exploiter, but, from the point of view of the colonial
country, this in no way alters the parasitic character of its function.
Capitalist exploitation in every imperialist country has proceeded by
way of the development of productive forces. The specific colonial
forms of capitalist exploitation, put into operation by the same
British, French or any other bourgeoisie, in the final analysis hinder
the development of productive forces of the colonies concerned. The
carrying through of the minimum of constructive activity (railways,
harbours, etc.) is indispensable both for military domination in the
country and for guaranteeing the uninterrupted activity of the taxation
machine, as well as for the trading needs of the imperialist countries.
Agriculture in the colonies is compelled to a considerable degree to
work for export, but peasant economy is thereby no means liberated from
the oppression of its pre-capitalist features. As a general rule it is
converted to a “free” trading economy by means of the subordination of
the pre-capitalist forms of production to the needs of finance capital,
the deepening of pre-capitalist methods of exploitation through
subjection of peasant economy to the yoke of rapidly-developing trade
and usury capital, the increase of tax burdens, etc. The exploitation
of the peasantry is increased, but the productive methods of the latter
are not improved. As a general rule, the industrial working up of the
colonial raw material is not carried out in the colonies themselves,
but in the capitalist countries, and primarily in the metropolis. The
profits obtained in the colonies are, for the most part, not expended
productively, but are sucked out of the country and are invested either
in the metropolis or in new spheres of expansion on the part of the
imperialism concerned. Thus the fundamental tendency of colonial
exploitation acts in the direction of hindering the development of the
productive forces in the colonies, of despoiling them of their natural
riches, and, above all, of exhausting the reserves of human productive
forces in the colonial countries,

Development Hindered by Imperialism

12. In as much, however, as colonial exploitation presupposes a
certain encouragement of the development of production in the colonies
this development, thanks to the imperialist monopoly, is directed on
such lines and accelerated only in such a degree as corresponds to the
interests of the metropolis, and, in particular, to the interests of
the preservation of its colonial monopoly. It may cause a part of the
peasantry, for example, to pass over from grain cultivation to the
production of cotton, sugar or rubber (Sudan, Cuba, Java, Egypt), but
this takes place in such a way and by such means that it not only in no
way corresponds to the interests of the independent economic
development of the colonial country, but, on the contrary, still
further strengthens the dependence of the latter on the imperialist
metropolis. With the object of widening the raw material base for world
imperialism, there are created new agricultural crops in the place of
those destroyed by colonial policy. New systems of irrigation are
constructed with the same object in view in the place of the old ones
that have been destroyed, and become in the hands of the imperialists a
weapon for increasing the exploitation of the peasantry. With a view to
widening the internal market, attempts are undertaken to adapt to the
capitalist mode of production the agrarian relationships which are
partly created by colonial policy itself. Plantations of various kinds
serve the interest of metropolitan finance capital. The exploitation of
the mineral wealth of the colonies is conducted in accordance with the
needs of the metropolitan industry, especially its need to put an end
to dependence on sources of raw materials in other countries to which
the monopoly of this imperialism does not extend.

These are the main spheres of colonial production. Only where
manufacture constitutes a very simple process (tobacco industry, sugar
refineries, etc.) or where the expense of transporting raw material can
be considerably decreased by the first stage of manufacture being
performed on the spot, does the development of production in the
colonies attain comparatively large dimensions. In any case, the
capitalist enterprises created by the imperialists in the colonies
(with the exception of a few enterprises established in case of
military needs) are predominantly or exclusively of an
agrarian-capitalist character, and are distinguished by a low organic
composition of capital. Real industrialisation of the colonial country,
in particular the building up of a flourishing engineering industry,
which might make possible the independent development of the productive
forces of the country, is not accelerated, but, on the contrary, is
hindered by the metropolis. This is the essence of its function of
colonial enslavement: the colonial country is compelled to sacrifice
the interests of its independent development and to play the part of an
economic (agrarian-raw material) appendage to foreign capitalism,
which, at the expense of the labouring classes of the colonial country,
strengthens the economic and political power of the imperialist
bourgeoisie in order to perpetuate the monopoly of the latter in the
colonies and to increase its expansion as compared with the rest of the
world.

Just as the “classical capitalism” of the pre-imperialist epoch most
clearly demonstrated its negative features of destruction of the old
without an equivalent creation of the new precisely in its policy of
plunder, in the colonies, so also the most characteristic side of the
decay of imperialism, its essential feature of usury and parasitism, is
especially clearly revealed in its colonial economy. The endeavour of
the great imperialist powers to adapt to an ever-increasing degree
their monopolised colonies to the, needs of the capitalist economy of
the metropolis not only evokes the destruction of the traditional
economic structure of the indigenous colonial population, but, side by
side with this, leads to the destruction of the equilibrium between
separate branches of production, and, in the final analysis, leads to
an artificial retardation of the development of the productive forces
in the colonies.

A general tendency on the part of all the metropolitan centres is
the endeavour to draw the colony into, and make it a subordinate
constituent part of, the particular imperialist system concerned, in
order to guarantee the latter’s economic supremacy, and so as to be
able, on the one hand, to maintain it in opposition to other
imperialist systems, and, on the other hand, to cut off the colony from
immediate relations with world economy as a whole, and to keep to
themselves the function of intermediary and supreme regulator in all
its economic relations with the outer world. This tendency of the
imperialists to strengthen the one-sided dependence of the colonies
leads to a growth of competition between the different imperialist
powers and international trusts, etc.

As conditioned by these circumstances, the development of capitalist
relationships and of the exploitation of the masses of the people in
the colonies assumes very varied forms.

Impoverishment of the Peasantry

13. In as much as the overwhelming mass of the colonial population
is connected with land and lives in the villages, the plundering
character of the forms of exploitation of the peasantry made use of by
imperialism and its allies (the class of landowners and trading-usury
capital) acquires a specially important significance. Owing to the
interference of imperialism (imposition of taxation, import of
industrial wares from the metropolis, etc.), the drawing of the village
into the sphere of monetary and trading economy is accompanied here by
a process of pauperisation of the peasantry, destruction of village
handicraft industry, etc., and proceeds at a much more rapid rate than
was the case when the same process took place in the leading capitalist
countries. On the other hand, the delayed industrial development in the
colonies has put sharp limits to the process of proletarianisation.
This enormous disproportion between the rapid rate of destruction of
the old forms of economy and the slow development of the new has given
rise in China, India, Indonesia, Egypt, etc. to an extraordinary
“pressure on agriculture”, and to agrarian immigration, rack-renting
and extreme fragmentation of the land cultivated by the peasantry. At
the same time, the whole burden of the previous feudal or semi-feudal
conditions of exploitation and bondage, in somewhat “modernised”, but
in no way lighter, forms, lies as before on the shoulders of the
peasantry. Capitalism, which has included the colonial village into its
system of taxation and trade apparatus, and which has overturned
pre-capitalist relations (for instance, the destruction of the village
commune), does not thereby liberate the peasants from the yoke of
pre-capitalist forms of bondage and exploitation, but only gives the
latter a monetary expression (feudal services and rent in kind are
partially replaced by money rent, while payment of taxes in kind is
replaced by money taxes, and so on), which still more increases the
suffering of the peasantry. To the “assistance” of the peasants in
their miserable position comes the usurer, robbing them and under
certain conditions (e.g. in some localities of India and China) even
creating a hereditary slavery based on their indebtedness.

Notwithstanding the great variety of agrarian relationships in
different colonial countries, and even in different parts of one and
the same country, the poverty-stricken position of the peasant masses
is almost everywhere the same. Partly owing to unequal exchange, and
partly to direct exploitation, the peasants in these countries are not
in a position to raise the technical or organisational level of their
economy. The productivity of their labour, as also the demand for it,
is falling. The pauperisation of the peasantry in these countries is a
general phenomenon. In India, China and Indonesia the pauperisation of
the peasantry has reached such a height that, at the present time, the
most characteristic figure in the village is the poor peasant, almost
or entirely deprived of land and not infrequently suffering starvation.
Big landownership is here hardly connected in any way with large-scale
agriculture, but serves only as a means for extorting rents from the
peasants. There is frequently to be found a hierarchy of many stages,
consisting of landlords and sub-landlords, parasitic intermediate links
between the labouring cultivator and the big landowner (zamindar) or
the state. The ancient systems of artificial irrigation, which in these
countries is of great importance for agriculture, thanks to the
interference of imperialism, first of all fell into decay, and when
later they were re-established on a capitalist basis, then they were
found to be too dear for the peasants to make use of. Famines became a
more and more frequent occurrence. The peasant finds himself completely
helpless in the face of epidemics and various kinds of elemental
misfortune. Wide masses of the peasantry are thrown out of the process
of production; they have no chances of finding work in the towns and
rarely find work in the village, where they develop into miserable
coolies.

This poverty-stricken position of the peasantry denotes at the same
time a crisis in the internal market for industry, which in its turn
represents a powerful obstacle to the capitalist development of the
country. Not only the national bourgeoisie of India, China, Egypt,
etc., but also imperialism itself is sensible of this peasant misery as
an obstacle in the path of the expansion of their exploitation; but the
economic and political interests of both of them are so closely bound
up with large ownership, as also with trading and usury capital in the
village, that they are not in a position to carry through an agrarian
reform of any wide significance.

Peasant domestic production and artisan production becomes more and
more disintegrated. The development of trade creates an important
stratum of native trading bourgeoisie, which fulfils also the functions
of purchasing agent, usurer, etc. The predominance and hegemony of
trading and usury capital, in the specific conditions of colonial
economy, delays the growth of industrial capital. In the struggle for
the internal market, national capital again and again meets with the
competition of imported foreign capital in the colonial country itself
and the retarding influence of pre-capitalist relations in the
villages. In spite of these obstacles, there does arise in certain
branches of production a native large-scale industry (chiefly light
industry). National capital and national banks come into being and
begin to develop.

The pitiful attempts at carrying through agrarian reforms without
damaging the colonial regime are intended to facilitate the gradual
conversion of semi-feudal landownership into capitalist landlordism,
and in certain cases to establish a narrow stratum of kulak peasants.
In practice this only leads to an ever-increasing pauperisation of the
overwhelming majority of the peasants, which again, in its turn,
paralyses the development of the internal market. It is on the basis of
these contradictory economic processes that the most important social
forces of the colonial movement have their development.

The Role of Finance Capital

14. In the period of imperialism there stands out with especial
prominence the role of finance capital in the seizure of economic and
political monopoly in the colonies. This especially finds expression in
definite economic consequences resulting from the export of capital to
the colonies. The exported capital here flows predominantly into the
sphere of trade, it functions mainly as usurious loan capital and it
pursues the task of preserving and strengthening the oppressive
apparatus of the imperialist state in the colonial country (by the aid
of state loans etc.), or of achieving full control over the so-called
independent state organs of the native bourgeoisie in the colonial
countries.

The export of capital to the colonies hastens the development in
them of capitalist relations. A portion of the exported capital,
dispatched to the colony for productive purposes, does in part conduce
to an acceleration of industrial development; by no means, however, in
the direction of independence, but rather in a direction which
strengthens the dependence of colonial economy on the finance capital
of the imperialist country. In general, imported capital is
concentrated in the colonies almost exclusively for the extraction and
supply of raw materials, or for the first stages of their utilisation.
Exported capital is used also for extending the system of
communications (railways, shipbuilding, harbour works, etc.), thus
facilitating the transport of raw material and binding the colonies
more closely to the metropolis. A favourite form of investment of
capital in agriculture is in large plantations, with the object of
cheap production of food products and the monopolisation of vast
sources of raw material. The transference to the metropolis of the
greater portion of the surplus value extorted from the cheap labour
power of the colonial slaves retards to a correspondingly enormous
degree the upward growth of the economy of the colonial countries and
the development of their productive forces, and serves as an obstacle
to the economic and political emancipation of the colonies.

Another basic feature in the mutual relations between the capitalist
states and the colonial countries is the endeavour of various
monopolist groups of finance capital to monopolise the whole external
trade of the separate colonial and semi-colonial countries, and in this
way to subordinate to their control and regulation all the channels
which connect the colonial economy with the world market. The direct
influence of this monopolisation of external trade by a few monopolist
exporting firms on the course of capitalist development in the colonies
is expressed, not so much in the development of a national internal
market, as in the adaptation of the scattered internal colonial trade
to the needs of export, and in the “bleeding” of the national wealth of
the colonial countries by the imperialist parasites. This peculiar
development of colonial trade finds its specific expression also in the
form and character of the imperialist banks in the colonies, which
mobilise the savings of the native bourgeoisie chiefly for financing
the foreign trade of the colonies etc.

Imperialist Economic Policy

15. The entire economic policy of imperialism in relation to the
colonies is determined by its endeavour to preserve and increase their
dependence, to deepen their exploitation and, as far as possible, to
impede their independent development. Only under the pressure of
special circumstances may the bourgeoisie of the imperialist states
find itself compelled to cooperate in the development of big industry
in the colonies. Thus, for example, requirements for preparation or
conduct of war may, to a limited extent, lead to the creation of
various enterprises in engineering and chemical industry in certain of
the most strategically important colonies (e.g. India). Competition on
the part of more powerful competitors may compel the metropolis to
grant definite concessions in matters of tariff policy, in which case
it safeguards itself by means of preferential duties.

With the object of buying up definite strata of the bourgeoisie in
the colonial and semi-colonial countries, especially in periods of a
rising revolutionary movement, the metropolis may, to a certain degree,
weaken its economic pressure. But, in the measure that these
extraordinary and, for the most part, extra-economic circumstances lose
their influence, the economic policy of the imperialist powers is
immediately directed towards repressing and retarding the economic
development of the colonies. Consequently the development of the
national economy of the colonies, and especially their
industrialisation, the all-round independent development of their
industry can only be realised in the strongest contradiction to the
policy of imperialism. Thus the specific character of the development
of the colonial countries is especially expressed in the fact that the
growth of productive forces is realised with extreme difficulties,
spasmodically, artificially, being limited to individual branches of
industry.

The inevitable result of this is that the pressure of imperialism on
the colonial and semi-colonial countries is reproduced each time in a
higher degree and evokes an ever more powerful resistance on the part
of the social-economic factors originating from imperialism itself. The
continual hindrance to independent development more and more deepens
the antagonism of the colonial peoples in relation to imperialism and
leads to revolutionary crises, boycott movements, nationalist
revolutionary insurrections, etc.

On the one hand, the imminent objective contradictions in the
capitalist development of the colonies become strengthened, which
itself deepens the contradictions between the independent development
of the colonies and the interests of the bourgeoisie of the imperialist
states; on the other hand, the new capitalist forms of exploitation
bring into the arena a genuine revolutionary force – the proletariat,
around which the many millions of the peasant masses rally more and
more strongly in order to offer organised resistance to the yoke of
finance capital.

All the chatter of the imperialists and their lackeys about the
policy of decolonisation being carried through by the imperialist
powers, about cooperation in “free development of the colonies”,
reveals itself as nothing but an imperialist lie. It is of the utmost
importance that communists, both in the imperialist and in the colonial
countries, should completely expose this lie.

III. Communist Strategy and Tactics in China and Similar Colonial Countries

Tasks of the Democratic Revolution

16. As in all colonies and semi-colonies, so also in China and India
the development of productive forces and the socialisation of labour
stands at a comparatively low level. This circumstance, together with
the fact of foreign domination and also the presence of powerful relics
of feudalism and pre-capitalist relations, determines the character of
the immediate stage of the revolution in these countries. In the
revolutionary movement of these countries we have to deal with the bourgeois-democratic revolution,
i.e. of the stage signifying preparing of the prerequisites for
proletarian dictatorship and socialist revolution. Corresponding to
this, the following kinds of tasks can be pointed out which may be
considered as general basic tasks of the bourgeois-democratic
revolution in the colonies and semi-colonies:

(a) A shifting in the relationship of forces in favour of the
proletariat: emancipation of the country from the yoke of imperialism
(nationalisation of foreign concessions, railways, banks, etc.), and
the establishment of the national unity of the country where this has
not yet been attained: overthrow of the power of the exploiting classes
at the back of which imperialism stands: organisation of soviets of
workers and peasants: establishment of the dictatorship of the
proletariat and peasantry: consolidation of the hegemony of the
proletariat.

(b) The carrying through of the agrarian revolution: emancipation of
the peasants from all pre-capitalist and colonial conditions of
exploitation and bondage: nationalisation of the land: radical measures
for alleviating the position of the peasantry with the object of
establishing the closest-possible economic and political union between
the town and village.

(c) In correspondence with the further development of industry,
transport, etc., and with the accompanying growth of the proletariat,
the widespread development of trade-union organisations of the working
class, strengthening of the communist party and its conquest of a firm
leading position among the toiling masses: the achievement of the
eight-hour day.

(d) Establishment of equal rights for nationalities and of sex
equality (equal rights for women): separation of the church from the
state and the abolition of caste distinctions: political education and
raising of the general cultural level of the masses in town and
country, etc.

How far the bourgeois-democratic revolution will be able in practice
to realise all its basic tasks, and how far it will be the case that
part of these tasks will be carried into effect only by the socialist
revolution, will depend on the course of the revolutionary movement of
the workers and peasants and its successes or defeats in the struggles
against the imperialists, feudal lords and the bourgeoisie. In
particular, the emancipation of the colony from the imperialist yoke is
facilitated by the development of the socialist revolution in the
capitalist world, and can only be completely guaranteed by the victory
of the proletariat in the leading capitalist countries. The transition
of the revolution to a socialist phase demands the presence of certain
minimum prerequisites, as, for example, a certain definite level of
development in the country of industry, of trade-union organisations of
the proletariat and of a strong communist party. The most important is
precisely the development of a strong communist party with a big mass
influence, which would be in the highest degree a slow and difficult
process were it not accelerated by the bourgeois-democratic revolution which already grows and develops as a result of the objective conditions in these countries.

Character of Colonial Democratic Revolution

17. The bourgeois-democratic revolution in the colonies is
distinguished from the bourgeois-democratic revolution in an
independent country chiefly in that it is organically bound up with the
national-emancipatory struggle against imperialist domination. The
national factor exerts considerable influence on the revolutionary
process in all colonies, as well as in those semi-colonies where
imperialist enslavement already appears in its naked form, leading to
the revolt of the mass of the people. On the one hand, national
oppression hastens the ripening of the revolutionary classes,
strengthens the dissatisfaction of the masses of workers and peasants,
facilitates their mobilisation and endows the revolutionary mass
revolts with the elemental force and character of a genuine popular
revolution. On the other hand, the national factor is able to influence
not only the movement of the working class and peasantry, but also the
attitude of all the remaining classes, modifying its form during the
process of revolution. Above all, the poor urban petty-bourgeoisie,
together with the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, is during the first
period to a very considerable extent brought under the influence of the
active revolutionary forces; secondly, the position of the colonial
bourgeoisie in the bourgeois-democratic revolution is still for the
most part an ambiguous one, and its vacillations in accordance with the
course of the revolution are even more considerable than in the
bourgeoisie of an independent country (e.g. the Russian bourgeoisie in
1905-17). It is very important, in accordance with the concrete
circumstances, to investigate very carefully the special influence of
the national factor, which to a considerable degree determines the
special character of the colonial revolution, and to take it into
account in the tactics of the communist party concerned.

Along with the national-emancipatory struggle, the agrarian revolution
constitutes the axis of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in the
chief colonial countries. Consequently communists must follow with the
greatest attention the development of the agrarian crisis and the
intensification of class contradictions in the village, they must from
the very beginning give a consciously-revolutionary direction to the
dissatisfaction of the workers and to the incipient peasant movement,
directing it against imperialist exploitation and bondage, as also
against the yoke of the various pre-capitalist (feudal and semi-feudal)
relationships as a result of which peasant economy is suffering,
disintegrating and perishing. The incredible backwardness of
agriculture, the prevalence of oppressive rent relations and the
oppression of trading-usury capital represent the greatest hindrance to
the development of productive forces in village economy in the
colonies, and stand in monstrous contradiction with the
highly-organised forms of exchange between the village agricultural
production of the colonies and the world market created by monopoly
imperialism.

Attitude of the National Bourgeoisie

18. The national bourgeoisie in these colonial countries does not
adopt a uniform attitude in relation to imperialism. A part of this
bourgeoisie, more especially the trading bourgeoisie, directly serves
the interests of imperialist capital (the so-called compradore*
bourgeoisie). In general, it more or less consistently defends the
antinational imperialist point of view directed against the whole
nationalist movement, in common with the feudal allies of imperialism
and the more highly-paid native officials. The remaining portions of
the native bourgeoisie, especially the portion reflecting the interests
of native industry, support the national movement and represent a
special vacillating compromising tendency which may be designated as national reformism
(or, in the terminology of the theses of the Second Congress of the
Communist International, a “bourgeois-democratic” tendency). This
intermediate position of the national bourgeoisie between the
revolutionary and imperialist camps is no longer to be observed, it is
true, in China after 1925; there the greater part of the national
bourgeoisie from the beginning, owing to the special situation, took
the leadership in the national-emancipatory war; later on it passed
over finally into the camp of counterrevolution. In India and Egypt we
still observe, for the time being, the typical bourgeois-nationalist
movement – an opportunist movement, subject to great vacillations, balancing between imperialism and revolution.

* Native merchants, engaged in trade with imperialist centres, whose
interest are in continuation of imperialist exploitation. They act as
agents for exploiting the masses in the colonial countries.

The independence of the country in relation to imperialism, being to
the advantage of the whole colonial people, corresponds also to the
interests of the national bourgeoisie, but is in irreconcilable
contradiction to the whole essence of the imperialist system. Various
native capitalists, it is true, are by their immediate interests to a
great extent bound by numerous threads to imperialist capital.
Imperialism is able directly to buy up a considerable portion of them
(it may be even a greater portion than heretofore), and to create a
definite compradore position, a position of intermediary trader, sub
exploiter or overseer over the enslaved population. But the position of
slave-owner, of monopolist supreme exploiter, imperialism reserves for
itself alone. Independent rule, a future of “free” independent
capitalist development, hegemony over an “independent” people – this
imperialism will never voluntarily yield to the national bourgeoisie.
In this respect the contradiction of interests between the national
bourgeoisie of the colonial country and imperialism is objectively of a
radical character. In this respect imperialism demands capitulation on the part of the national bourgeoisie.

The native bourgeoisie, as the weaker side, again and again
capitulates to imperialism. Its capitulation, however, is not final as
long as the danger of class revolution on the part of the
masses has not become immediate, acute and menacing. In order, on the
one hand, to avoid this danger, and, on the other hand, to strengthen
its position in relation to imperialism, bourgeois nationalism in these
colonies strives to obtain the support of the petty-bourgeoisie, and in
part also of the working class. Since, in relation to the working
class, it has little prospect of success (as soon as the working class
in these countries has at all begun to awake politically), it becomes
the more important for it to obtain support from the peasantry. But
just here is the weakest point of the colonial bourgeoisie. The
unbearable exploitation of the colonial peasantry can only be put an
end to by the way of the agrarian revolution. The bourgeoisie of China,
India and Egypt is by its immediate interests, so closely bound up with
landlordism, with usury capital and with the exploitation of the
peasant masses in general, that it takes its stand not only against the
agrarian revolution but also against every decisive agrarian reform. It
is afraid, and not without foundation, that even the mere open
formulation of the agrarian question will stimulate and accelerate the
growth of the process of revolutionary fermentation in the peasant
masses. Thus the reformist bourgeoisie hardly dares to decide to
approach practically this basic urgent question.

Instead it attempts by means of empty nationalist phrases and’
gestures to keep the petty-bourgeois masses under its influence and to
induce imperialism to grant certain concessions. But the imperialists
draw the reins ever tighter, and the national bourgeoisie is incapable
of offering any serious resistance. Accordingly, the national
bourgeoisie in every conflict with imperialism attempts, on the one
hand, to make a great show of its nationalist “firmness” of principle,
and, on the other hand, it sows illusions as to the possibility of a
peaceful compromise with imperialism. Through both, the one and the
other, the masses inevitably become disillusioned, and in this way they
gradually outlive their reformist illusions.

Proletarian Leadership in Colonial Emancipation

19. An incorrect estimation of the basic national-reformist tendency of
the national bourgeoisie in these colonial countries gives rise to the
possibility of serious errors in the strategy and tactics of the
communist parties concerned. In particular two kinds of mistakes are
possible:

(a) A non understanding of the difference between the
national-reformist and national-revolutionary tendency can lead to a
“khvostist”* policy in relation to the bourgeoisie, to an
insufficiently accurate political and organisational delimitation of
the proletariat from the bourgeoisie, and to the blurring of the chief
revolutionary slogans (especially the slogans of the agrarian
revolution), etc. This was the fundamental mistake into which the
Communist Party of China fell in 1925-27.

* Khvost equals “tail”. Following behind events in policy rather than leading.

(b) An underestimation of the special significance which the
bourgeois national-reformist, as distinct from the feudal-imperialist
camp, possesses, owing to its mass influence on the ranks of the
working class, at least in the first stages of the movement, may lead
to a sectarian policy and to the isolation of the communists from the
toiling masses.

In both these cases insufficient attention is given to the
realisation of precisely those tasks which the Second Congress of the
Communist International had already characterised as the basic tasks of
the communist parties in the colonial countries, i.e. the tasks of
struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movement inside the nation
itself. Without this struggle, without the liberation of the toiling
masses from the influence of the bourgeoisie and of national-reformism,
the basic strategical aim of the communist movement in the
bourgeois-democratic revolution – the hegemony of the proletariat
– cannot be achieved. Without the hegemony of the proletariat, an
organic part of which is the leading role of the communist party, the
bourgeois-democratic revolution cannot be carried through to an end,
not to speak of the socialist revolution.

Role of the Petty-Bourgeoisie and Peasantry

20. The petty-bourgeoisie in the colonial and semi-colonial
countries plays a very important role. It consists of various strata,
which in different periods of the national-revolutionary movement play
very diverse roles. The artisan, who is hit by the competition of
foreign imported goods, is hostilely disposed towards imperialism. At
the same time he is interested in the unlimited exploitation of his
journeymen and apprentices, and accordingly he is hostilely disposed
towards the class-conscious labour movement. At the same time, also, he
usually suffers himself from the exploitation of trading and usury
capital. The exceedingly ambiguous and hopeless position of this
stratum of the petty-bourgeoisie determines its vacillations, and it
frequently falls under the influence of utopian reactionaries. The
small trader – both in town and village – is connected with village
exploitation through usury and trade, and he clings to the old forms of
exploitation in preference to the prospects of an expansion of the
internal market. These strata, however, are not homogeneous. These
sections of the trading bourgeoisie, which in one form or another are
connected with the compradores, occupy a different position from those
sections the activity of which is limited mainly to the internal
market.

The petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, the students and
such-like, are very frequently the most determined representatives, not
only of the specific interests of the petty-bourgeoisie, but also of
the general objective interests of the entire national bourgeoisie,
and, in the first period of the national movement, they often come out
as the spokesmen of the nationalist struggle. Their role on the surface
of the movement is comparatively important. In general they cannot act
as representatives of peasant interests, for the very social strata
from which they come are time and again connected with landlordism. The
upward growth of the revolutionary wave may drive them into the labour
movement, bringing with them their petty-bourgeois ideology of
vacillation and indecision. Only a few of them in the course of the
struggle are able to break with their own class and rise to an
understanding of the tasks of the class struggle of the proletariat,
and to become active defenders of the interests of the latter. It
frequently happens that the petty-bourgeois intellectuals give to their
ideology a socialist or even communist colour. In the struggle against
imperialism they have played, and in such countries as India and Egypt
they even now still partially play a revolutionary role. The mass
movement may draw them after it, but it may also push them into the
camp of extreme reaction or, at least, cause the spread of utopian
reactionary tendencies in their ranks.

Alongside of these strata there are to be found in the colonial towns considerable sections of urban poor,
the position of which objectively drives them to the support of
revolution-artisans who do not exploit the labour of others, street
traders, unemployed intellectuals, ruined peasants seeking work, etc.
Further, the colonial town, as also the village, has a populous section
of “coolies”, semi-proletarians who have not passed through the school
of factory production and who live by casual labour.

The peasantry, along with the proletariat and in the character of
its ally, represents a driving force of the revolution. The immense
many-millioned peasant mass constitutes the overwhelming majority of
the population even in the most developed colonies (in some colonies it
is 90 per cent of the population). The many millions of starving
tenant-cultivators, petty-peasants oppressed by want and groaning under
all kinds of pre-capitalist and capitalist forms of exploitation, a
considerable portion of them deprived of the possibility of cultivation
even on the lands that they rent, thrown out from the process of
production and slowly dying from famine and disease, village
agricultural labourers – all these are the allies of the proletariat in
the village. The peasantry can only achieve its emancipation under the
leadership of the proletariat, but the proletariat can only lead the
bourgeois-democratic revolution to victory in union with the peasantry.
The process of class differentiation of the peasantry, in the colonies
and semi-colonies which possess important relics of feudalism and of
pre-capitalist relationships, proceeds at a comparatively slow rate.
Nevertheless, market relationships in these countries have developed to
such a degree that the peasantry already no longer represent a
homogeneous mass, as far as their class relations are concerned. In the
villages of China and India, in particular in certain parts of these
countries, it is already possible to find exploiting elements derived
from the peasantry, who exploit the peasants and village labourers
through usury, trade, employment of hired labour, the sale or letting
out of land on rent, the loaning of cattle or agricultural implements,
etc. In general, it is possible that, in the first period of the
struggle of the peasantry against the landlords, the proletariat may be
able to carry with it the entire peasantry. But, in the further
development of the struggle some of the upper strata of the peasantry
may pass into the camp of counterrevolution. The proletariat can
achieve its leading role in relation to the peasantry only under the
conditions of unflinching struggle for its partial demands, for
complete carrying through of the agrarian revolution, and only if it
will lead the struggle of the wide masses of the peasantry for a
revolutionary settlement of the agrarian question.

The Working Class

21. The working class in the colonies and semi-colonies has
characteristic features which play an important role in the building up
of an independent working-class movement and proletarian class ideology
in these countries. The predominant part of the colonial proletariat is
derived from the pauperised village, with which the worker remains in
connection even when engaged in production. In the majority of colonies
(with the exception of some large factory towns such as Shanghai,
Bombay, Calcutta, etc.) we find, as a general rule, only a first
generation of proletarians engaged in large-scale production. Another
portion is made up of the ruined artisans who are being driven out of
the decaying handicrafts, which are widely spread even in the foremost
colonies. The ruined artisan, a petty owner, carries with him into the
working class a guild tendency and ideology which serves as a basis for
the penetration of national-reformist influence into the labour
movement of the colonies. The mobile composition of the proletariat
(frequent renewal of the labour force in the factories owing to workers
returning to the village and the inflow of new masses of
poverty-stricken peasants into production); the considerable percentage
of women and children, the numerous different languages, illiteracy,
the wide distribution of religious and caste prejudices – all make
difficult the work of systematic agitation and propaganda and retard
the growth of class-consciousness among the workers. Nevertheless, the
merciless exploitation, practised in the most oppressive forms by
native and foreign capital, and the entire absence of political rights
for the workers, create the objective preconditions on the basis of
which the labour movement in the colonies is rapidly overcoming all
obstacles, and every year draws greater and greater masses of the
working class into the struggle against the native exploiters and the
imperialists.

The first period of the growth of the labour movement in the
colonial and semi-colonial countries (approximately 1919-1923) is
organically bound up with the general growth of the national
revolutionary movement which followed the world war, and which was
characterised by the subordination of the class interests of the
working class to the interests of the anti-imperialist struggle headed
by the native bourgeoisie. In so far as the labour strikes and other
demonstrations bore an organisational character, they were usually
organised by petty-bourgeois intellectuals who restricted the demands
of the workers to questions of the national struggle. The most
important characteristic of the second period of rapid growth of the
labour movement in the colonies, on the other hand, the period which
began after the Fifth Congress of the Communist International, was the
emergence of the working class of the colonies into the political arena
as an independent class force directly opposing itself to the national
bourgeoisie, and entering upon a struggle with the latter in defence of
its own immediate class interests, and for hegemony in the national
revolution as a whole. The history of the last few years has clearly
confirmed this characteristic of the new stage of the colonial
revolution, first of all in the example of the great Chinese
revolution, and subsequently in the insurrection in Indonesia. There is
every ground to believe that in India the working class is liberating
itself from the influence of the nationalist and social reformist
leaders, and is being converted into an independent political factor in
the struggle against the British imperialists and the native
bourgeoisie.

Tasks of the Communists

22. In order to correctly determine the immediate tasks of the
revolutionary movement it is important as a starting point to take into
consideration the degree of maturity attained by the movement
in the separate colonial countries. The revolutionary movement in China
is distinguished from the present movement in India by a series of
essential features, characterising the different degrees of maturity of
the movement in the two countries. The previous experience of the
Chinese revolution must undoubtedly be utilised in the revolutionary
movement in India and other analogous colonial countries. But it would
be a completely mistaken application of the Chinese experience if, at
the present time in India, Egypt, etc., we were to formulate the
immediate tasks, slogans and tactical methods in exactly the same form
as took place in China, for example, in the Wuhan period, or in the
form in which it is necessary to formulate them there at the present
time. The tendency to skip over the inevitable difficulties and special
tasks of the present stage of the revolutionary movement in India,
Egypt, etc. can only be harmful. It is necessary to carry through much
work in the building up and consolidation of the communist party and
trade union organisations of the proletariat, in the revolutionisation
of the trade unions, in the development of economic and political mass
demonstrations, and in the winning over of the masses, and their
liberation from the influence of the national-reformist bourgeoisie,
before it is possible to advance in these countries, with definite
prospects of success to the realisation of such tasks, as those which
were fully carried out in China during the Wuhan period as the
immediate tasks of the struggle of the working class and peasantry.

The interests of the struggle for the class rule of the national
bourgeoisie compel the most important bourgeois parties in India and
Egypt (Swarajists, Wafdists) still to demonstrate their opposition to
the ruling imperialist-feudal bloc. Although this opposition has not a
revolutionary but a reformist and class-collaborationist character,
this by no means signifies that it has not a special significance. The
national bourgeoisie has not the significance of a force in the
struggle against imperialism. Nevertheless, this bourgeois-reformist
opposition has its real special significance for the development of the
revolutionary movement – and this both in a negative as well as in a
positive sense – in so far as it possesses any mass influence at all.
Its chief feature is that it exerts a braking, retarding influence on
the development of the revolutionary movement, in so far as it is
successful in drawing the toiling masses in its wake and holding them
back from the revolutionary struggle. On the other hand, however, the
demonstrations of the bourgeois opposition against the ruling
imperialist-feudal bloc, even if they do not have any deep foundation,
can exert a certain accelerating influence on the process of the
political awakening of the wide masses of toilers; the concrete open
conflicts of the national-reformist bourgeoisie with imperialism,
although of little significance in themselves, may, under certain
conditions, indirectly serve as the cause of the unleashing of even
greater revolutionary mass actions.

It is true that the reformist bourgeoisie itself endeavours not to
allow any such effect of its oppositional activities, and in one way or
another seeks to prevent it in advance. But wherever the objective
conditions exist for a far-reaching political crisis, there the
activities of the national-reformist opposition, even their
insignificant conflicts with imperialism which are least of all
connected with the real source of the revolution, can become of serious
importance. The communists must learn how to utilise each and every
conflict, to develop such conflicts and to broaden their significance,
to connect them with the agitation for revolutionary slogans, to spread
the news of these conflicts among the wide masses, to awaken these
masses to independent, open manifestations in support of their own
demands, etc.

National-Reformist Danger

23. The correct tactics in the struggle against such parties as the
Swarajists and Wafdists during this stage consist in the successful
exposure of their real national-reformist character. These parties have
already more than once betrayed the national-emancipatory struggle, but
they have not yet finally passed over to the counterrevolutionary camp
in the manner of the Kuomintang. There is no doubt that they will do
this later on, but at the present time they are so particularly
dangerous precisely because their real physiognomy has not yet been
exposed in the eyes of the wide masses of toilers. For this exposure
there is still needed a very large amount of communist educational
work, and a very great deal of new political experience on the part of
the masses themselves. If the communists do not already succeed in this
stage in shaking the faith of the toiling masses in the bourgeois
national-reformist leadership of the national movement, then this
leadership in the coming upward growth of the revolutionary wave will
represent an enormous danger for the revolution.

Consequently it is necessary, by means of correct communist tactics,
adapted to the conditions of the present stage, to help the toiling
masses in India, Egypt, Indonesia and such colonies to emancipate
themselves from the influence of the bourgeois parties. This is not to
be achieved by any noisy phrases, however radical they may sound
superficially, about the absence of any distinction between the
oppositional national-reformists (Swarajists, Wafdists, etc.) and the
British imperialists or their feudal counterrevolutionary
allies. The national-reformist leaders would easily be able to make use
of such a deviation in order to incite the masses against the
communists. The masses see the chief immediate enemy of national
emancipation in the form of the imperialist-feudal bloc, which in
itself is correct at this stage of the movement in India, Egypt and
Indonesia (as far as one side of the matter is concerned). In the
struggle against this ruling counterrevolutionary force, the Indian,
Egyptian and Indonesian communists must proceed in advance of all, they
must fight more determinedly, more consistently and more resolutely
than any petty-bourgeois section or national-revolutionary group. Of
course, this fight must not be waged for the organising of any kind of
“putsch” or premature attempt at a rising on the part of the small
revolutionary minority, but for the purpose of organising the widest
possible strata of the masses of toilers in demonstrations and other
manifestations so that in this way the active participation of these
masses can be guaranteed for a victorious uprising at a further stage
of the revolutionary struggle.

At the same time, it is no less important to mercilessly expose
before the toiling masses the national-reformist character of the
Swarajist, Wafdist and other nationalist parties, and in particular of
their leaders. It is necessary to expose their half-heartedness
and vacillation in the national struggle, their bargainings and
attempts to reach a compromise with British imperialism, their previous
capitulations and counterrevolutionary advances, their reactionary
resistance to the class demands of the proletariat and peasantry, their
empty nationalist phraseology, their dissemination of harmful illusions
about the peaceful decolonisation of the country and their sabotage in
relation to the application of revolutionary methods in the
national-emancipatory struggle.

It is necessary to reject the formation of any kind of bloc between
the communist party and the nationalist-reformist opposition; this does
not exclude the formation of temporary agreements and the coordinating
of separate activities in connection with definite anti-imperialist
demonstrations, provided that these demonstrations of the bourgeois
opposition can be utilised for the development of the mass movement,
and provided that these agreements do not in any way limit the freedom
of the communist parties in the matter of agitation among the masses
and among the organisations of the latter. Of course, in this work the
communists must know how at the same time to carry on the most
relentless ideological and political struggle against bourgeois
nationalism and against the slightest signs of its influence inside the
labour movement. In such cases the communist party must take particular
care not only to maintain its complete political independence and to
make quite clear its own character, but also, on the basis of facts, to
open the eyes of the masses of toilers who are under the influence of
the bourgeois opposition, so that they will perceive all the
hopelessness of this opposition and the danger of the
bourgeois-democratic illusions that it disseminates.

Need for Communist Independence

24. An incorrect estimation of the chief tendency of the parties of
the big national bourgeoisie gives rise to the danger of an incorrect
estimation of the character and role of the petty-bourgeois parties.
The development of these parties, as a general rule, follows a course
from the national-revolutionary to the national-reformist position.
Even such movements, as Sun Yat-senism in China, Gandhism in India,
Sarekat Islam in Indonesia, were originally radical petty-bourgeois
ideological movements which, however, as a result of their service to
the big bourgeoisie, became converted into a bourgeois
nationalist-reformist movement. After this, in India, Egypt and
Indonesia, there was again founded a radical wing from among the
different petty-bourgeois groups (e.g. the Republican Party, Watanists,
Sarekat Rayat), which stands for a more or less consistent
national-revolutionary point of view. In such a country as India the
rise is possible of some new analogous radical petty-bourgeois parties
and groups. But the fact must not be lost sight of that these parties,
essentially considered, are connected with the national bourgeoisie.
The petty-bourgeois intelligentsia at the head of these parties puts
forward national-revolutionary demands, but at the same time appears
more or less conscious as the representative of the capitalist
development of their country. Some of these elements can become the
followers of various kinds of reactionary utopias, but when confronted
with feudalism and imperialism they, in distinction from the parties of
the big national bourgeoisie, appear at the outset not as reformists
but as more or less revolutionary representatives of the
anti-imperialist interests of the colonial bourgeoisie. This is the
case, at least, so long as the development of the revolutionary process
in the country does not put on the order of the day in a definite and
sharp form the fundamental international questions of the bourgeois
revolution, particularly the question of the realisation of the
agrarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat and
peasantry. When this happens then it usually denotes the end of the
revolutionary character of the petty-bourgeois parties. As soon as the
revolution has placed the class interests of the proletariat and the
peasantry in critical contradiction not only to the rule of the
feudal-imperialist bloc, but also to the class rule of the bourgeoisie,
the petty-bourgeois groups usually go back to the position of the
national-reformist parties.

It is absolutely essential that the communist parties in these
countries should from the very beginning demarcate themselves in the
most clear-cut fashion, both politically and organisationally, from all
the petty-bourgeois groups and parties. In so far as the needs of the
revolutionary struggle demand it, a temporary cooperation is
permissible, and certain circumstances even a temporary union between
the communist party and the national-revolutionary movement, provided
that the latter is a genuine revolutionary movement, that it genuinely
struggles against the ruling power and that its representatives do not
put obstacles in the way of the communists educating and organising in
a revolutionary sense the peasants and wide masses of the exploited. In
every such cooperation, however, it is essential to take the most
careful precautions in order that this cooperation does not degenerate
into a fusion of the communist movement with the
bourgeois-revolutionary movement. The communist movement in all
circumstances must unconditionally preserve the independence of the
proletarian movement and its own independence in agitation, in
organisation and in demonstrations. To criticise the half-heartedness
and vacillation of the petty-bourgeois groups, to anticipate their
vacillations, to be prepared for them and at the same time to utilise
to the full all the revolutionary possibilities of these strata, to
carry on a consistent struggle against petty-bourgeois influence over
the proletariat, employ all means to liberate the wide masses of the
peasantry from the influence of the petty-bourgeois parties, and to win
from them the hegemony over the peasantry – these are the tasks of the
communist parties .

Development of the Revolutionary Movement

25. How rapidly the revolutionary movement in India, Egypt, etc.
will reach such a high degree of maturity as it has already reached in
China depends to an essential extent on how quickly there arises a big
revolutionary wave. In the event of its postponement for a considerable
time the political and organisational ripening of the driving forces of
the revolution can only proceed by way of a gradual and relatively slow
process of development. If, however, the coming powerful revolutionary
wave rises earlier, then the movement may quickly be able to attain a
much higher stage of maturity. Under exceptionally favourable
circumstances it is not even excluded that the revolution there may be
able in one single mighty wave to achieve the conquest of power by the
proletariat and peasantry. It is also possible that the process of the
development of the revolution from one stage to another more mature
stage will be interrupted for a more or less prolonged period of time,
in particular if the coming wave of revolutionary upheaval reaches a
relatively small height, and is not of great duration. Consequently it
is necessary in every case to subject the concrete situation to the
most detailed analysis.

The following factors are of decisive significance for the immediate
growing over of the revolution from one stage to another higher stage:
(1) the degree of development of the revolutionary proletarian
leadership of the movement, i.e. of the communist party of the given
country (the number of its members, its independent character,
consciousness and fighting readiness, as well as its authority and
connection with the masses and its influence on the trade-union and
peasant movements), (2) the degree of organisation and the
revolutionary experience of the working class, as well as, to a certain
extent, of the peasantry. The revolutionary experience of the masses
signifies experience of struggle; in the first place, liberation from
the influence over them of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties.
Since these prerequisites, for the first big mass outburst of the
revolution, even in the best circumstances, are present only to an
insufficient degree, an unusually deep revolutionary crisis and an
unusually high and persistent revolutionary wave are required for it to
be possible for the bourgeois-democratic revolution with the aid of
this one wave of upheaval to lead to the complete victory of the
proletariat and peasantry. Such a possibility is most easily presented,
for example, when the ruling imperialism is temporarily distracted by a
long continued war outside the frontiers of the colonial country
concerned.

Chinese CP and the Revolution

26. Living, concrete, historical dialectics such as were
demonstrated by the now completed first period of the
bourgeois-democratic revolution in China, will give to the communists,
especially those working in the colonial countries, a valuable
experience which it is necessary to study diligently in order to draw
the correct conclusions, especially from the mistakes committed in the
course of communist work in the colonies. The rise of the revolutionary
wave in China was usually prolonged (over two years), since it was
connected with a protracted internal war. Inasmuch as the Northern
Expedition was not conducted directly against the great imperialist
powers, and inasmuch as the latter, owing to competition between them,
were partially passive during the first period, while the bourgeois
leadership of the national movement had already for some years held
Canton in its hands – a definite, though limited territory – as well as
a centralised power backed up by the army, etc., it is accordingly
understandable that in this exceptional case a great part of the
bourgeoisie in the beginning looked upon the national-emancipatory war
as its own particular affair. The Kuomintang, in which it practically
played a leading role, in the course of a short time came to be at the
head of the national-revolutionary movement, a circumstance which in
the course of further events represented an extremely great danger for
the revolution.

On the other hand, among the peculiarities of the situation in China
must be numbered the fact that the proletariat there was: stronger in
relation to its bourgeoisie than the proletariat of other countries. It
is true that it was weakly organised, but during the upward growth of
the revolutionary wave the growth of labour organisation proceeded at a
very rapid rate. The Communist Party also rose in a short time from
being a small group to a party with 60,000 members (and presently even
more), and possessing a wide influence among the workers. Naturally in
these conditions many bourgeois elements also entered the party. The
party was lacking in revolutionary experience and, even more, in
traditions of Bolshevism. In the beginning the upper hand in its
leadership was taken by wavering elements, which were still only to a
very small degree liberated from petty-bourgeois opportunist
tendencies, which inadequately understood the independent tasks and
role of the Communist Party, and which came out against any decisive
development of the agrarian revolution.

The entry of the communists for a certain period into the leading
party of the national revolution, the Kuomintang, in itself
corresponded to the requirements of the struggle and of the situation,
and was also in the interests of the indispensable communist work among
the fairly wide masses of toilers who followed this party. In addition,
at the beginning the Communist Party of China received in the territory
under the rule of the Kuomintang government the possibility of
independent agitation among the masses of workers and peasants and
among the soldiers of the national army and their organisations. At
that time the party possessed greater possibilities than it actually
made use of. At that time it did not sufficiently carefully explain to
the masses its proletarian class position in distinction from Sun
Yat-senism and other petty-bourgeois tendencies. In the ranks of the
Kuomintang the communists did not carry out any independent policy,
leaving out of account that in any such inevitable bloc the communists
must conduct themselves in an unconditionally critical fashion towards
the bourgeois elements and always come out as an independent force. The
communists neglected to expose the vacillations of the national
bourgeoisie and of bourgeois-democratic nationalism, just at the time
when this exposure ought to have constituted one of the most important
tasks of the Communist Party. The inevitable disruption of the
Kuomintang drew nearer and nearer as the national army advanced, but
the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party undertook nothing, or
almost nothing, in order to prepare the party in case of a breach, and
in order to guarantee its independent position and to unite the
revolutionary workers and peasants in an independent fighting bloc
which would oppose itself to the leadership of the Kuomintang.

Thus the bourgeois counterrevolutionary coup of Chiang Kai-shek
found the revolutionary proletariat completely unprepared, and threw
its ranks into confusion. Further, the leadership of the Communist
Party even at that time badly understood the process of the development
of the revolution from one stage to another and did not carry through
the correct changes in the line of the party made necessary by this
coup. In as much as the leftwing of the petty-bourgeois leaders of the
Kuomintang during the course of a certain time still went together with
the Communist Party, there took place a territorial separation; there
arose the separate governments of Nanking and Wuhan. But the Communist
Party did not occupy a leading position even in Wuhan. Very quickly in
the Wuhan territory there commenced a second period, characterised,
among other things, on the one hand, by the presence of elements of an
incipient, still indefinite dual power (the seizure by peasant unions
of a number of ruling functions in the villages, and the extension of
the functions of the trade unions, determined by the endeavour of the
masses to reach a “plebeian” independent solution of the question of
power), and, on the other hand, by the absence of sufficiently mature
conditions for the organisation of soviets as organs of revolt against
the Wuhan government, in so far as the latter still carried on a
revolutionary struggle against the Nanking government, which
represented the treachery of the bourgeoisie to the revolution.

The Communist Party at that time directly hindered the independent
actions of the revolutionary masses, it did not facilitate their task
of gathering and organising forces, it did not assist in breaking down
the influence of the leaders of the Left Kuomintang and their position
in the country and in the army. Instead of utilising its participation
in the government for these purposes, it, on the contrary, disguised
the whole activity of this government (individual petty-bourgeois
leading members of the party went so far that they even participated in
the disarming of the workers’ pickets in Wuhan and in sanctioning the
punitive expedition to Changsha!).

At the bottom of this opportunist policy lay the hope of avoiding a
rupture with the petty-bourgeois leaders of the Wuhan government. But,
as a matter of fact, this rupture could only be put off for a short
space of time. When the mass risings acquired a threatening character
the leaders of the Wuhan Kuomintang also began to reach out towards
unity with their allies on the other side of the barricades. The
revolutionary movement of the workers and peasants still continued to
exert all its forces in order to achieve victory. The Communist Party
of China now also corrected its line, elected a new leadership, and
took its place at the head of the revolution. But the revolutionary
wave was already falling. The heroic mass struggles under the slogan of
Soviets could only achieve a few temporary successes. Only in
individual localities did the uprisings of the agrarian revolution
begin sufficiently early, in the remainder the many millions of the
peasant rearguard were delayed in their advance. Instead of the former
gross errors of opportunist leadership, there were now revealed, on the
contrary, in various places extremely harmful “putschist” mistakes. The
preparations for risings also did not take place without great mistakes
on the part of the communists. The heavy defeats once more threw back
the revolution, which in the south had already entered into the second
stage of development, to the starting point of this stage.

Tasks of the CP of China

27. Thanks to the fact that the Chinese national bourgeoisie
obtained participation in power, the composition of the former bloc of
the imperialists and militarists was partly altered, and the new ruling
bloc now represents the immediate chief enemy of the revolution. In
order to overthrow it, it is necessary to win over the decisive masses
of the proletariat and peasantry to the side of the revolution. This
constitutes the most important task of the Chinese Communist Party for
the immediate future. The Chinese workers have already acquired an
enormous experience. The further strengthening and revolutionisation of
the trade-union movement and the further strengthening of the Communist
Party is essential. A certain portion of the Chinese peasantry has
already outlived bourgeois-democratic illusions and shown considerable
activity in the revolutionary struggle, but this is only an
insignificant minority of the huge peasant population of China. It is
very probable that some petty-bourgeois groups will take up the
position of national reformism (inside or outside the Kuomintang) in
order by a certain display of bourgeois-democratic opposition to
conquer influence over the toiling masses (to these petty-bourgeois
reformists belong also Tang Ping-san and the social-democratic
leaders). Under no circumstances must the significance of these
attempts be underestimated. The isolation of these groups and their
exposure before the masses by means of correct communist tactics
constitutes an absolutely essential precondition for the Communist
Party to be able to take a really leading position in the moment of the
coming new rise of the revolutionary wave in China. At the present time
the party must everywhere propagate among the masses the idea of
soviets, the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry,
and the inevitability of the coming revolutionary mass armed uprising.
It must already now emphasise in its agitation the necessity of
overthrow of the ruling bloc and the mobilisation of the masses for
revolutionary demonstrations. Diligently studying the objective
conditions of the revolution as they continue to mature, utilising
every possibility for the mobilisation of the masses, it must
consistently and undeviatingly follow the line of seizure of state
power, organisation of soviets as organs of the insurrection,
expropriation of the landlords and big property owners, expulsion .of
the foreign imperialists and the confiscation of their property.

IV. The immediate Tasks of the Communists

Difficulties in Colonial Countries

28. The building up and development of the communist parties in the
colonies and semi-colonies, the removal of the excessively marked lack
of correspondence between the objective revolutionary situation and the
weakness of the subjective factor, represents one of the most important
and primary tasks of the Communist International. This task comes up
against a whole host of objective difficulties, determined by the
historical development and social structure of these countries.
Corresponding with the weak development of industry, the working class
in these countries is still young and, for their population, relatively
small in numbers. The colonial regime of terror, as also the presence
of illiteracy, numerous different languages, etc., renders difficult
the organisation and development of the working class in general and
the rapid development of the communist party in particular. The
fluidity of composition and the large percentage of women and children
are characteristic features of the colonial proletariat. In many places
seasonal workers predominate, and even the basic ranks of the
proletariat still have one foot in the village. This facilitates the
connection between the working class and the peasantry, but makes more
difficult the development of the class-consciousness of the
proletariat.

Experience has shown that, in the majority of colonial and
semi-colonial countries, an important if not a predominant part of the
party ranks in the first stage of the movement is recruited from the
petty bourgeoisie and, in particular, from the revolutionarily-inclined
intelligentsia, very frequently students. It is not uncommon that these
elements enter the party because they see in it the most decisive enemy
of imperialism, at the same time not always sufficiently understanding
that the communist party is not only the party of struggle against
imperialist exploitation and oppression, but is the party which, as the
party of the proletariat, leads a decisive struggle against all kinds
of exploitation and expropriation. Many of these adherents of the party
in the course of the revolutionary struggle will reach a proletarian
class point of view, another part will find it more difficult to free
themselves to the end from the moods, waverings, and half-hearted
ideology of the petty bourgeoisie. It is precisely these elements of
the party that find it especially difficult at the critical moment to
estimate correctly the role of the national bourgeoisie and to act
consistently, and without any kind of vacillation in the questions of
the agrarian revolution etc. The colonial countries do not possess
social-democratic traditions, but neither do they possess Marxist
traditions. Our young parties in the process of struggle, in the
process of building up the party, will have to overcome the relics of
national petty-bourgeois ideology in order to find the road to
Bolshevism.

These objective difficulties make it all the more obligatory for the
Communist International to give an absolutely special attention to the
tasks of building the party in the colonial and semi-colonial
countries. An especially great responsibility in this connection lies
with the communist parties of the imperialist countries. This demands
not only assistance in the matter of working out the correct political
line, accurate analysis of experience in the sphere of organisation and
agitation, but also systematic education of the party ranks, the
creation of a certain minimum of Marxist-Leninist literature and its
translation into the languages of the different colonial countries,
most active assistance in the matter of study and Marxist analysis of
the economic and social problems of the colonies and semi-colonies and
in the creation of a party press, etc. The communist parties in the
colonial and semi-colonial countries are bound to exert all their
efforts for the creation of a cadre of party functionaries from out of
the working class itself, utilising members of the party –
intellectuals – in the role of leaders and lecturers for propagandist
circles and legal and illegal party schools, so as to educate from the
leading workers the necessary agitators, propagandists, organisers and
leaders permeated by the spirit of Leninism. The communist parties in
the colonial countries must become genuinely proletarian parties also
in their social composition. Including in their ranks the best elements
of the revolutionary intelligentsia, becoming steeled in the process of
the daily struggle and of big revolutionary fights, the communist
parties must give their chief attention to the task of strengthening
the party organisation in the factories and mines, among the transport
workers and among the semi-slaves in the plantations. Everywhere where
capitalism herds together the proletariat, the communist party must
establish its nuclei, including the working-class tenements, the big
working-class barracks of the factories, and the barrack like
plantations so strictly guarded from working-class agitation. Nor
should work be neglected among the journeymen, apprentices and coolies
employed in small handicraft workshops. The native workers and the
workers who have come from the metropolis must unite together in one
and the same party organisation. The experience of the older parties in
the matter of a correct combination of legal and illegal work must be
utilised in accordance with the situation in the different colonial
countries, in order as far as possible to avoid that which took place,
for example, in China, where the vast mass organisations were broken up
comparatively easily and without any great internal resistance under
the blows of the reaction, thus greatly weakening the connection
between the communist party and the masses.

Trade-Union Work in the Colonies

29. Alongside the development of the communist party, the most
important of the immediate general tasks of the communists in the
colonies and semi-colonies is that of work in the trade unions. The
organisation of the unorganised workers, above all in the largest
branches of industry (engineering, mining, transport, textiles, etc.),
the conversion of the existing organisations into real class trade
unions, the fight with the national-reformists and reactionary
trade-union leaders for the leadership in these organisations – all
these things must be included in the tasks of trade-union work. Another
category of tasks consists in support of the economic interests and
immediate demands of the workers in the struggle with the employers
and, in particular, in resolute and correct leadership of strikes. It
is obligatory for the communists to carry on revolutionary propagandist
work in the reactionary trade unions which contain masses of workers.
In those countries where circumstances dictate the necessity for
creating special revolutionary trade unions (because the reactionary
trade-union leadership hinders the organisation of the unorganised
workers, destroys the most elementary demands of the trade-union
democracy and converts the trade unions into strike-breaking
organisations, etc.), it is necessary to consult on this question with
the leadership of the RILU.* Special attention needs to be given to the
intrigues of the Amsterdam International in the colonial countries
(China, India, North Africa), and to the exposure of its reactionary
character before the masses. It is obligatory for the communist party
in the metropolis concerned to afford active help to the revolutionary
trade-union movement of the colony by its advice and by sending
permanent instructors. Up to now too little has been done in this
connection.

* Red International of Labour Unions.

Work among the Peasants

30. Wherever peasant organisations exist – entirely irrespective of
their character, as long as they are real mass organisations – the
communist party must adopt measures in order to penetrate into these
organisations. One of the immediate tasks of the party is the correct
formulation of the agrarian question in the ranks of the working class,
explaining to the latter the importance and decisive role of the
agrarian revolution and acquainting members of the party with methods
of agitation, propaganda and organisational work among the peasantry.
Every party organisation has the duty of studying the specific agrarian
situation in the region of its activity and of formulating the
corresponding current demands of the peasants. The communists must
everywhere attempt to give a revolutionary character to the existing
peasant movement. They must organise both new revolutionary peasant
unions and peasant committees, between which and the communist party it
is necessary to establish regular connections. Both in the peasant
masses and in the ranks of the proletariat it is essential to carryon
energetic propaganda in favour of a fighting bloc of the proletariat
and peasantry.

Special “workers’ and peasants’ parties”, whatever revolutionary
character they may possess, can be too easily at particular periods
converted into ordinary petty-bourgeois parties; and, accordingly, the
communists are not recommended to organise such parties. The communist
party can never build its organisation on the basis of a fusion of two
classes, and in the same way also it cannot make it its task to
organise other parties on this basis, which is characteristic of
petty-bourgeois groups. The fighting bloc of the masses of workers and
peasants can find expression in carefully prepare and periodically
convened joint conferences and congresses of representatives of
revolutionary peasant unions (or their committees) and of trade unions;
in certain circumstances it may be found expedient to create
revolutionary committees of action, coordinating the activity of the
organisations of the workers and peasants which stand at the head of
various mass activities, etc. Finally, during the revolution one of the
fundamental tasks of the communist party is to promote the creation of
elected soviets of workers’ and peasants’ deputies. Under any and all
circumstances, the communist party is bound to exert a decisive
influence on the peasant movement, to find out and apply those
organisational forms of bloc between the workers and peasants which
will most of all facilitate the task of leadership in the peasant
movement and to create the prerequisites for the further transformation
of these forms into soviets as organs of struggle and power

Youth in the Colonies

31. In the colonial countries the proletarian youth is exposed to
especially grievous suffering, and the relative part played by the
youth in the composition of the working class is considerably higher in
the colonial countries than in the old capitalist countries. The
exploitation of the working youth is subject to no legal limitations;
there is no legal restriction of the working day, the conditions of
labour are unbearably burdensome and are accompanied by inhuman conduct
on the part of the employers and overseers. Matters are no better with
the peasant youth. It is not remarkable that the worker-peasant youth
is taking an active part in all the revolutionary movements of the
colonial countries. From this youth was derived a great part of the
revolutionary organisations and peasant armies in China, the guerilla
armies of Korea, which have carried on the struggle against Japanese
colonisers, as well as the participants in the heroic risings in
Indonesia, etc.

An immediate fundamental task of the Communist Youth International
in the colonies is the creation of revolutionary mass organisations of
the proletarian youth under communist leadership, i.e. mass communist
youth leagues. In this connection the training of genuinely communist
leading cadres of the youth movement is just as important as securing a
mass character and basic proletarian composition for the communist
youth organisations. Together with the working youth, it is desirable
to attract the best and most devoted revolutionary elements taking part
in the peasant youth movement in order to strengthen the proletarian
elements in the leading organs of the communist youth leagues. A mass
recruitment of the youth from non-proletarian strata into the communist
youth leagues is only permissible to the degree that there is
guaranteed in the latter an overwhelming proletarian composition and
firm communist leadership.

While taking part in all struggles of the communist party, the
communist youth organisation must avoid both efforts to put itself in
the place of the party as regards leadership of the working class (the
so-called “vanguard” tendency) as also the peculiar liquidatory
tendencies expressed in the denial of the necessity for a youth
communist movement and in the reduction of the significance of the
communist youth organisation to the role of student or other general
indefinite youth organisations.

Young communist leaguers of the colonies, with the object of winning
over the wide masses of the youth taking part in the workers’,
peasants’ and revolutionary movements, and of liberating them from the
influence of national-reformism and pseudo-revolutionary tendencies,
must also make use of a system of auxiliary and, in relation to the YCL
legal organisations, building them on the basis of a revolutionary
programme and securing the leadership for the communist party and YCL.

The YCL must work in the already existing organisations in such a
fashion as to draw them into revolutionary activity and to win
influence and leadership within them. While utilising all these
organisations and drawing the working masses of the young workers into
the revolutionary struggle, the YCL organisations must not lose their
independence or diminish their immediate work. The loss of the
communist youth character and the consequent possible loss of their
leadership over the revolutionary youth movement represents a great
danger to be faced. Consequently, while utilising, developing and
working in auxiliary organisations, the YCL must strengthen its own
immediate work, coming out openly before the masses of working youth
and attracting the best elements of the mass organisations into the
ranks of the YCL. In the number of these organisations must be reckoned
the youth sections of the trade unions and peasant unions, associations
of working youth, antimilitarist unions, sports associations, local
unions, etc.

The Sixth Congress of the Communist International makes it
obligatory for all communist parties in the colonies to render all
possible assistance in the creation and development of the communist
youth movement, and to struggle against any deviations or backward
views in the working class and trade unions which express themselves in
ignoring the interests of the working youth and in disinclination to
participate in the struggle for the demand for improvement of the
conditions of the exploited young workers.

The Position of Women and Children

32. The exploitation of the labour of women and children in the
colonial countries takes on especially wide dimensions and plunderous
forms. The most miserable starvation wages, an unbearably long working
day, the association in some regions of women and children for work
under slave condition in plantations, etc., prison-like life in working
class dwellings, barbarous and inconsiderate treatment – such are the
conditions of labour of these sections. At the same time, there is
carried on a widespread reactionary work among the proletarian women on
the part of the bourgeoisie, missionaries, etc., who have at their
disposal considerable monetary resources. But the women workers of the
colonies, driven to desperation, are gradually awakening to class
consciousness, are entering upon the revolutionary path and decisively
and boldly joining the ranks of the struggling colonial proletariat.
This was evident, above all, in the self-sacrificing participation of
the Chinese working women in the events of the revolution (mass strikes
of women workers, individual acts of heroism of women workers, the
entrance of peasant women into the ranks of guerilla fighters). The
communist parties of the colonies and semi-colonies must pay great
attention to work among these strata, particularly in enterprises where
women’s labour predominates, systematically attracting the women into
trade-union organisations and winning over the best of them for the
communist party. In struggling against the influence of hostile
organisations, the party must use all the resources of oral, written,
legal and illegal agitation and propaganda at its disposal in order to
win over the working women.

Alongside these general tasks, the communist parties in the various
colonies have a series of special tasks, resulting from the particular
social-economic structure and political situation in each country. In
proposing to the particular communist parties concerned the working out
of the whole of these tasks in their concrete plans of action, the
congress indicates below some of the most important of these immediate
tasks.

China

33. In China, the future growth of the revolution will place before
the party as an immediate practical task the preparation for and
carrying through of armed insurrection as the sole path to the
completion of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and to the overthrow
of the power of the imperialists, landlords and national bourgeoisie –
the power of the Kuomintang. Under existing circumstances,
characterised fundamentally by the absence of .a revolutionary impulse
among the wide masses of the Chinese people, the general line of the
party must be the struggle for the masses. The carrying through of this
line under the conditions of the strengthening of the anti-imperialist
movement, of a certain revival of the strike struggle and of the
continuing peasant activity, demands from the party the application of
all its strength for gathering, consolidating and uniting the
proletariat around the basic slogans of the party, an immense
organisational work for the strengthening of the revolutionary
trade-union and peasant associations, maximum attention to the conduct
of the everyday economic and political work among the masses of the
proletariat .and peasantry, and intense activity in explaining to the
proletariat the experience of the preceding period of the revolution.
At the same time, the party must explain to the masses the
impossibility of a radical improvement in their position, the
impossibility of the overthrow of imperialist domination and solution
of the tasks of the agrarian revolution, without the overthrow from
power of the Kuomintang and militarists and the creation of the rule of
soviets.

The party must utilise every conflict, however insignificant,
between the workers and capitalists in the factories, between the
peasants and landlords in the villages, between the soldiers and
officers in the army, deepening and sharpening these class clashes, in
order to mobilise the widest masses of workers and peasants and to win
them over to its side. The party must utilise all occurrences of
violence on the part of international imperialism against the Chinese
people, which at the present time take the form of a military seizure
of different regions, as well as all the bloody exploits of infuriated
reaction, in order to widen the popular protest of the masses against
the ruling classes.

The success of this struggle for the masses will be determined to a
considerable degree by the extent of the success achieved in applying
tactics based on a correct estimate of the situation, and in outliving
the mistakes and tendencies of an extreme-left character (putschism,
military adventurism, individual terror, etc.) which have occurred in
the party, as well as those of an opportunist character such as found
their expression in the demands for summoning a national assembly and
for the revival of the Kuomintang mass movement. Simultaneously, the
party must conquer every tendency in the direction of replacing methods
of convincing and educating the masses by methods of compulsion and
commandment, which in the present conditions of cruel class terror,
serve so seriously to enhance the danger of a rupture between the party
and the toiling masses.

In the sphere of internal party work, the party must strive to
re-establish the nuclei and local party committees which have been
destroyed by the reaction, to improve the social composition of the
party, and, in so doing, to concentrate especial attention on the
creation of party nuclei in the important branches of production in the
big factories, workshops and railway shops. The Communist Party of
China must also devote most serious attention to regulating the social
composition of the village organisations, so that these organisations
shall be recruited basically from the proletarian, semi-proletarian and
the poorest elements of the villages. The putting into effect of the
principles of democratic centralism; the guaranteeing, as far as
illegal conditions of work permit it, of inner-party democracy;
transition to collective discussion and decision of questions; and,
along with this, struggle against ultra-democratic tendencies in
certain organisations, leading to breach of party discipline, to the
growth of irresponsibility and to the destruction of the authority of
the leading party centres.

It is necessary to strengthen the work in the theoretical training
of the membership of the party, in the raising of their political
level; the establishment of systematic propaganda of Marxism and
Leninism; the investigation of the experience and lessons of the
preceding stages of the Chinese revolution (the Wuhan period, the
Canton insurrection, etc.). In relation to “third” parties (Tan
Ping-san, Wang Tsin-wei), representing a weapon of the
bourgeois-landlord counterrevolution, the task of the Chinese Communist
Party consists in a decisive struggle against them, and in the
exposure, on the basis of the practical anti-imperialist and mass
movement, of the national-reformist activity of these parties as
agencies of the ruling classes.

The fundamental slogans, through which the party must seek to win over the masses, are the following:

Overthrow of imperialist domination.

Confiscation of foreign enterprises and banks.

Union of the country, with recognition of the right of each nationality to self-determination.

Overthrow of the power of the militarists and the Kuomintang.

Establishment of the power of soviets of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ representatives.

The 8-hour working day, increase of wages, assistance to the unemployed and social insurance.

Confiscation of all lands of big landlords, land for the peasants and soldiers.

The abolition of all governmental, militarist and local taxes and levies; a single progressively graduated income tax.

Union with the USSR and the world proletarian movement.

India

34. The basic tasks of the Indian communists consist in
struggle against British imperialism for the emancipation of the
country, for destruction of all relics of feudalism, for the agrarian
revolution and for establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat
and peasant in the form of a soviet republic. These tasks can be
successfully carried out only when there will be created a powerful
communist party which will be able to place itself at the head of the
wide masses of the working class, peasantry and all the toilers, and to
lead them in the struggle against the feudal-imperialist bloc.

The strike movement of Indian proletariat now taking place, its
independence from bourgeois nationalism, the all-India character of
this movement, its distribution over almost all branches of industry,
the frequent and protracted strikes, the stubbornness and great
resoluteness with which the workers have carried them on, the coming
forward of leaders of the strikes from the midst of the workers
themselves – all these things denote a turning point in the history of
the struggle of the Indian proletariat, and prove that in India the
preconditions have matured which are essential for the creation of a
mass communist party. The union of all Communist groups and individual
communists scattered throughout the country into a single, independent
and centralised party represents the first task of Indian communists.
While rejecting the principle of the building of the party on a
two-class basis, the communists must utilise the connections of the
existing workers’ and peasants’ parties with the toiling masses for
strengthening their own party, bearing in mind that the hegemony of the
proletariat cannot be realised without the existence of a consolidated,
steadfast communist party armed with the theory of Marxism. The
agitational work of the Communist Party must be bound up with the
struggle for the immediate demands of the workers, at the same time
explaining to them the general aims which the Communist Party sets out
to achieve and the methods which it applies for their realisation. It
is essential to establish nuclei in the various industrial and other
enterprises, and these must take an active part in the labour movement,
in the organisation and conduct of strikes and political
demonstrations. The communist organisations must from the very
beginning devote special attention to the training of leading party
cadres from the ranks of the workers.

In the trade unions, the Indian communists must mercilessly expose
the nationalist-reformist leaders and carryon a decisive struggle for
the conversion of the trade unions into genuine class organisations of
the proletariat and for the replacement of the present reformist
leadership by consistent revolutionary representatives from the mass of
the workers. It is especially necessary to expose the method so much
favoured by Indian reformists of deciding conflicts by means of
petition to the representatives of British imperialism, as well as to
“impartial” courts for adjudication between workers and employers. In
this struggle, it is necessary to push forward the demands for
trade-union democracy, for putting the trade-union apparatus into the
hands of the workers, etc. The levers for party work in the trade
unions must be the communist fractions as well as groups founded by the
communists and sympathising with them. It is necessary to utilise the
present strike wave in order to organise the unorganised workers. The
miners and engineering workers, the coolies working on the plantations
and agricultural labourers in general represent the least organised
sections of the Indian proletariat and the communists need to devote
the necessary attention to them.

The communists must unmask the national reformism of the Indian
National Congress and oppose all the phrases of the Swarajists,
Gandhists, etc., about passive resistance, with the irreconcilable
slogan of struggle for the emancipation of the country and the
expulsion of the imperialists.

In relation to the peasantry and peasant organisations the Indian
communists are faced above all with the task of acquainting the widest
strata of the peasantry with the general demands of the party in the
agrarian question, for which purpose the party must work out an
agrarian programme of action. Through workers connected with the
village, as well as directly, the communists must stimulate the
struggle of the peasantry for partial demands, and in the process of
struggle organise peasant unions. It is essential to pay particular
attention to make sure that the newly-created peasant organisations do
not fall under the influence of exploiting strata in the village. It is
necessary to give to the existing peasant organisations a concise
programme of concrete demands and to support the activities of the
peasants through demonstrations of workers in the towns.

It must be remembered that under no circumstances can the communists
relinquish their right to open criticism of the opportunist and
reformist tactics of the leadership of those mass organisations in
which they work.

Indonesia

35. In Indonesia, the suppression of the rising of 1926,
the arrest and exile of thousands of members of the Communist Party,
greatly disorganised its ranks. The need for rebuilding the destroyed
party organisation demands from the party new methods of work,
corresponding to the illegal conditions created by the police regime of
Dutch imperialism. The transference of the centre of gravity of all
activity of the party to the places where the town and village
proletariat is aggregated – to the factories, and plantations; the
restoration of the dissolved trade unions and the struggle for their
legalisation; special attention to the partial practical demands of the
peasantry; the development and strengthening of the peasant
organisations; work within all the mass nationalist organisations, in
which the Communist Party must establish fractions and rally round it
national-revolutionary elements; decisive struggle against the Dutch
social-democrats who, utilising the support of the government, are
attempting to secure a base for themselves in the native proletariat;
winning over the numerous Chinese workers for the class struggle and
national-revolutionary struggle and the establishment of connections
with the communist movements in China and India – these are some of the
most important tasks of the Indonesian Communist Party.

Korea

36. In Korea, the communists must strengthen their work in the ranks
of the proletariat, and in their efforts for a general increase of
activity and strengthening of the workers’ organisations and peasant
federations, they must attempt to secure the reorganisation of the
trade unions so that they include the most important strata of the
working class and combine economic struggle with political demands. At
the same time, they must associate in the closest possible fashion the
demands for the national emancipation of the country with the slogan of
the agrarian revolution, which is acquiring evermore pressing
importance in consequence of the growing pauperisation of the peasantry
under the plundering colonial regime.

In the ranks of the toiling masses, from which are derived the big
religious-national unions (Chun-Dokyo, etc.), it is necessary to carry
on a patient, revolutionary educational work in order to liberate them
from the influence of the national-reformist leaders. The communist
movement must be strengthened in all existing revolutionary mass
organisations; instead of attempting to create a general
national-revolutionary party, on the basis of individual membership,
endeavours must be made to coordinate and unite the activities of the
different national-revolutionary organisations with the aid of local
committees of action, so as to create, in fact, a bloc of revolutionary
elements under proletarian communist leadership, criticising in so
doing the half-heartedness and vacillations of the petty-bourgeois
nationalists and continually unmasking them before the masses. New
forces must be drawn into the Communist Party, above all from among the
industrial workers; this will be the best guarantee for the Bolshevik
development of the party, and especially it will facilitate the
absolutely necessary liquidation of the harmful spirit of factionalism
in its ranks.

Egypt

37. In Egypt, the Communist Party will be able to play an
important role in the national movement, but only if it bases itself on
the organised proletariat. The organisation of trade unions among the
Egyptian workers, the strengthening of the class struggle and
leadership in the class struggle are consequently, the first and most
important tasks of the Communist Party. The greatest danger to the
trade-union movement in Egypt at the present time lies in, the
bourgeois nationalists getting control of the workers’ trade unions.
Without a decisive struggle against their influence, a genuine class
organisation of the workers is impossible. One of the essential defects
of the Egyptian communists in the past has been that they have worked
exclusively among the urban workers. A correct setting out of the
agrarian question, the gradual drawing into the revolutionary struggle
of the wide masses of agricultural workers and peasants, and the
organisation of the these masses, constitutes one of the most important
tasks for the party. Special attention needs to be devoted to the
building up of the party itself, which is still very weak.

Northern Africa

38. In the French colonies of North Africa, the communists
must carry on work in all the already existing national-revolutionary
mass organisations in order to unite through them the genuine
revolutionary elements on a consistent and clear platform of a fighting
bloc of workers and peasants. As far as the organisation “Etoile Nord
Africain” is concerned, the communists must secure that it develops,
not in the form of a party, but in the form of a fighting bloc of
various revolutionary organisations, collectively associating with it
as a whole the trade unions of industrial and agricultural workers,
peasant unions, etc. In so doing, it is necessary to guarantee the
leading role of the revolutionary proletariat, and for this purpose it
is necessary, above all, to develop the trade-union movement as the
most important organisational mass basis for communist influence. The
achievement of .an ever closer cooperation of the revolutionary
sections of the white proletariat with the native working class must be
our constant task. In the agrarian question, it is necessary to be able
to direct the growing hatred of the village population, evoked by the
policy of expropriation conducted by French imperialism into the
channels of useful organised struggle (improved organisation of strikes
of agricultural workers, strengthening of unions of agricultural
workers in Algiers, etc.). The communist organisation in each
individual country must attract into its ranks in the first place
native workers, fighting against any negligent attitude towards them.
The communist parties, actively basing themselves on the native
proletariat, must formally and in fact become independent sections of
the Communist International.

The Negro Question

39. In connection with the colonial question, the Sixth Congress
draws the close attention of the communist parties to the negro
question. The position of the negroes varies in different countries and
accordingly requires concrete investigation and analysis. The
territories, in which compact negro masses are to be found, can be
divided according to their general features into the following groups:

The United States and some South-American countries, in
which the compact negro masses constitute a minority in relation to the
white population.

The Union of South Africa, where the negroes are the majority in relation to the white colonists.

The negro states which are actually colonies or semi-colonies of imperialism (Liberia, Haiti, San-Domingo).

The
whole of Central Africa divided into the colonies and mandated
territories of various imperialist powers (Great Britain, France,
Portugal, etc.). The tasks of the communist parties have to be defined
in their dependence on the concrete situation.

In the United States are to be found 12 million negroes. The
majority of them are tenants, paying rent in kind and living under
semi-feudal and semi-slave conditions. The position of these negro
tenant-farmers is exactly the same as that of agricultural labourers,
being only formally distinguishable from the slavery that the
constitution is supposed to have abolished. The white landowner,
uniting in one person the landlord, merchant and usurer, employs the
lynching of negroes, segregation and other methods of American
bourgeois democracy, reproducing the worst forms of exploitation of the
slavery period. Owing to the industrialisation of the South a negro
proletariat is coming into existence. At the same time, the emigration
of the negroes to the North continues at an ever-increasing rate, where
the huge majority of negroes become unskilled labourers. The growth of
the negro proletariat is the most important phenomenon of recent years
At the same time there arises in the negro quarters – the negro ghetto
– a petty bourgeoisie, from which is derived a stratum of intellectuals
and a thin stratum of bourgeoisie, the latter acting as the agent of
imperialism.

One of the most important tasks of the Communist Party consists in
the struggle for a complete and real equality of the negroes, for the
abolition of all kinds of racial, social and political inequalities. It
is the duty of the Communist Party to carry on the most energetic
struggle against any exhibition of white chauvinism, to organise active
resistance against lynching, to strengthen its work among negro
proletarians, to draw into its ranks the most conscious elements of the
negro workers, to fight for the acceptance of negro workers in all
organisations of white workers, and especially in the trade unions
(which does not exclude, if necessary, their organisation into separate
trade unions), to organise the masses of peasants and agricultural
workers in South, to carry on work among the negro petty-bourgeois
tendencies such as “Harveyism” and to carry on a struggle .against the
influence of such tendencies in the working class and peasantry. In
those regions of the South in which compact negro masses are living, it
is essential to put forward the slogan of the “Right of
self-determination for negroes!” A radical transformation of the
agrarian structure of the Southern states is one of the basic tasks of
the revolution. Negro communists must explain to non-negro workers and
peasants that only their close union with the white proletariat and
joint struggle with them against the American bourgeoisie can lead to
their liberation from barbarous exploitation and that only the
victorious proletarian revolution will completely and permanently solve
the agrarian and national questions of the Southern United States in
the interests of the overwhelming majority of the negro population of
the country.

In the Union of South Africa, the negro masses, which constitute the
majority of the population, are being expropriated from the land by the
white colonists and by the state, are deprived of political rights and
of the right of freedom of movement, are subjected to most brutal forms
of racial and class oppression, and suffer simultaneously from
pre-capitalist and capitalist methods of exploitation and oppression.
The Communist Party which has already achieved definite successes among
the negro proletariat has the duty of continuing still more
energetically the struggle for complete equality of rights for the
negroes, for the abolition of all special regulations and laws directed
against negroes, and for confiscation of the land of the landlords. In
drawing into its organisation non-negro workers, organising them in
trade unions, and in carrying on a struggle for the acceptance of
negroes by the trade unions of white workers, the Communist Party has
the obligation to struggle by all methods against every racial
prejudice in the ranks of the white workers and to eradicate entirely
such prejudices from its own ranks. The party must determinedly and
consistently put forward the slogan for the creation of an independent
native republic, with simultaneous guarantees for the rights of the
white minority, and the struggle in deeds for its
realisation. In proportion as the development of capitalist
relationships disintegrates the tribal structure, the party must
strengthen its work in the education in class consciousness of the
exploited strata of the negro population, and cooperate in their
liberation from the influence of the exploiting tribal strata, which
become more and more agents of imperialism.

In the Central African colonies of imperialism, colonial
exploitation takes on the very worst forms, uniting slave-owning,
feudal and capitalist methods of exploitation. In the post-war period,
capital from the imperialist metropolitan countries has flowed in an
ever-growing stream to the African colonies, compelling the
concentration of considerable masses of the expropriated and
proletarianised population in plantations, mining and other
enterprises. The congress makes it a duty of the communist parties in
the metropolitan countries to put an end to the indifference which they
have exhibited in regard to the mass movements in these colonies, and
instead to afford energetic support both in the imperialist centres and
in the colonies themselves to these movements, at the same time
attentively studying the situation in these countries for the purpose
of exposing the bloody exploits of imperialism and of creating the
possibility of organisational connections with the developing
proletarian elements there which are so mercilessly exploited by
imperialism.

Latin America

40. In Latin America, the communists must everywhere
actively participate in the revolutionary mass movements directed
against the landlord regime and against imperialism, even where these
movements are still under the leadership of the petty bourgeoisie. In
so doing, however, the communists may not under any circumstances
politically subordinate themselves to their possibly temporary ally.
While struggling for the hegemony during the revolutionary movement,
the communists must strive in the first place for the political and
organisational independence of their party, securing its transformation
into the leading party of the proletariat. In their agitation, the
communists must especially emphasise the following slogans:

Expropriation without compensation and the handing over of
a part of the big plantations and latifundia* to the collective
cultivation of the agricultural workers, and the distribution of the
other portion between the peasants, tenant-farmers and colonists.

Confiscation
of foreign enterprises (mines, industrial enterprises, banks, etc.),
and of the big enterprises of the national bourgeoisie and big
landlords.

The repudiation of state debts and the liquidation of any kind of control over the country on the part of imperialism.

The introduction of the 8-hour working day and the stamping out of semi-slavelike conditions of labour.

The arming of the workers and peasants and the conversion of the army into a workers’ and peasants’ militia.

The
establishment of the soviet power of the workers, peasants and
soldiers, in place of the class rule of the big landlords and of the
church. The central place in communist agitation must be occupied by
the slogan of a workers’ and peasants’ government, in contradistinction
to the so-called “revolutionary” governments of the military
dictatorship of the petty bourgeoisie.

The fundamental prerequisite for the success of the whole
revolutionary movement in these countries lies in the ideological and
organisational strengthening of the communist parties and in their
connection with the toiling masses and with the mass organisations. The
communist parties must unceasingly strive for the organisation of the
industrial workers into class trade unions, especially the workers in
big enterprises owned by imperialism, for the raising of the level of
their political and class consciousness and for the eradication of
reformist, anarcho-syndicalist and corporate ideology. At the same time
it is necessary to organise the peasants, tenant-farmers and
cultivators into peasant unions. It is necessary to assist the
extension of sections of the League Against Imperialism, in which
communist fractions must carry on work. Very important is the closest
possible mutual cooperation between all the revolutionary mass
organisations of workers and peasants, and primarily of the communist
parties, in the countries of Latin America and their connection with
the corresponding international organisations and also with the
revolutionary proletariat in the United States.

Tasks in Imperialist Countries

41. The immediate tasks of the communist parties of the imperialist
countries in the colonial question bear a threefold character. In the
first place, the establishment of regular connections between the
communist parties and the revolutionary trade-union organisations of
the imperialist centres, on the one hand, and the corresponding
revolutionary organisations of the colonies, on the other hand. The
connections hitherto established between the communist parties of the
imperialist centres and the revolutionary organisations of the
corresponding colonial countries, with the exception of a few cases,
cannot be regarded as adequate. This fact can only in part be explained
by objective difficulties. It is necessary to recognise that so far not
all the parties in the Communist International have fully understood
the decisive significance of the establishment of close, regular and
constant relations with the revolutionary movements in the colonies for
the purpose of affording these movements active support and immediate
practical help. Only in so far as the communist parties of the
imperialist countries render in fact practical assistance to the
revolutionary movement in the colonies, in so far as their help
actually facilitates the struggle of the corresponding colonial
countries against imperialism, can their position in the colonial
question be recognised as a genuinely Bolshevik one. In this lies the
criterion of the revolutionary activity in general.

The second series of tasks consists in genuine support of the
struggle of the colonial peoples against imperialism through the
organisation of mass demonstrations and other effective activities of
the proletariat. In this sphere, the activity of the communist parties
of the big capitalist countries has also been insufficient. The
preparation and organisation of such demonstrations of solidarity must
undoubtedly become one of the basic elements of communist agitation
among the mass of the workers of the capitalist countries. The
communists must expose the true spoliatory character of the capitalist
colonial regime by all the agitational means at their disposal (press,
public demonstrations, parliamentary platform); they must mercilessly
tear aside the network of lies with the help of which the colonial
system is represented as an affair of civilisation and general
progress. A special task in this sphere is the struggle against
missionary organisations, which act as one of the most effective levers
for imperialist expansion and for enslavement of the colonial peoples.

The communists must mobilise the wide masses of workers and peasants
in the capitalist countries on the basis of the demand for granting,
unconditionally and without reservation, complete state independence
and sovereignty to the colonial peoples. The fight against the bloody
suppression of colonial risings, .against armed intervention of the
imperialists against the national revolutions, against the growth of
the military aggressiveness of imperialism, with its new armed seizures
of territory, demands from the international proletariat a systematic,
organised and self-sacrificing struggle. It is necessary to take into
account the lessons to be drawn from the fact that not a single section
of the Communist International in the capitalist countries has
succeeded to an adequate degree in mobilising the masses for active
support of the Chinese revolution against the unceasing attacks of
world imperialism. The preparation for world war, the attack of the
.imperialists against the peoples of “their” colonies, with a view to
their “pacification”, places the task of active support for the
colonial revolution in the centre of attention and struggle for the
proletariat of the capitalist countries.

Striving for the immediate recall of the armed forces of imperialism
from the oppressed countries, the communist parties must work
unceasingly for the organisation of mass action in order to prevent the
transport of troops and munitions to the colonies.

The struggle against the colonial policy of social-democracy must be
looked upon by the communist party as an organic constituent part of
its struggle against imperialism. The Second International by the
position it adopted on the colonial question at its last congress in
Brussels has finally given sanction to what has already always been the
practical activity of the different socialist parties of the
imperialist countries during the post-war years. The colonial policy of
social-democracy is a policy of active support of imperialism in the
exploitation and oppression of the colonial people. It has officially
adopted the point of view which lies at the basis of the organisation
of the “League of Nations”, according to which the ruling classes of
the developed capitalist countries have the “right” to rule over the
majority of the peoples of the globe and to subject these peoples to a
cruel regime of exploitation and enslavement. In order to deceive a
portion of the working class and to secure its cooperation in the
maintenance of the colonial regime of plunder, social-democracy, in the
most shameful and repulsive manner, defends the exploits of imperialism
in the colonies. It disguises the real content of the capitalist
colonial system, it wilfully ignores the connection between colonial
policy and the danger of a new imperialist war, which is threatening
the proletariat and toiling masses of the whole world. Wherever the
indignation of the colonial peoples finds vent in the emancipatory
struggle against imperialism, social-democracy, notwithstanding its
lying phrases, in practice always stands on the side of the imperialist
executioners of the revolution. During the last few years, the
socialist parties of all the capitalist countries have been voting for
the credits which the governments of these countries demand for the
carrying on of war against the colonial peoples struggling for their
freedom (Morocco, Syria, Indonesia), they themselves take a direct part
in the business of colonial exploitation (French socialists act as
governors in the colonies at the appointment of imperialist
governments, the socialist cooperatives of Belgium participate in
colonial enterprises for the exploitation of the negro population of
the Congo), and they approve of the most cruel measures for the
suppression of colonial uprisings (defence by the leaders of the
British Labour Party of intervention in China, the activity of the
Dutch Socialist Party in defence of the suppression of the insurrection
in Indonesia). The social-democratic theory, alleging that the
capitalist colonial regime can be reformed and converted into a “good
colonial regime”, is a mask behind which the social-democrats attempt
to conceal their true social-imperialist character. The communists must
tear this mask from them and demonstrate to the toiling masses of the
imperialist countries that the socialist parties are the collaborators
and direct accomplices of imperialist colonial policy, that they have
in this sphere betrayed in the most flagrant fashion their own
socialist programme and that they have become an agency of imperialist
plunder in the imperialist countries and in the colonies.

The communists must pay the greatest attention to the attempt of the
social-democrats, made with the aid of the capitalist governments, to
extend their influence in the colonies and to establish there their own
sections and organisations. These attempts correspond to the policy of
that portion of the imperialist colonisers which makes it its aim to
reinforce its position in the colonies by the buying up of definite
strata of the native population. The specific conditions obtaining in
some colonies may lend a certain success to these attempts and lead to
the temporary development of a reformist movement in these countries
under the influence of the social-democracy of the capitalist
countries. The task of the communists must be to wage a decisive
struggle against such attempts, to expose the colonial policy of the
socialists before the native masses and in this way to direct against
the social-democratic leaders – servants of imperialism – the same
well-deserved hatred which the oppressed colonial peoples bear against
the imperialists.

In all these spheres, the communist parties of the capitalist
countries can only achieve success if they also carryon an intensive
propaganda in their own ranks in order to explain the communist
attitude to the colonial question, in order to eradicate completely
every vestige of social-democratic ideology in this question and to
resist any possible deviation from the correct Leninist line.

(PPH edition: 1948)

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